The Traveler

Issue date: 2/29/08 Section: News

Media Credit: Larry Ash Sam Litchworth a junior, is the first of several students protesting the planned ban on tobacco consumption at a ASG town hall meeting at the Arkansas Union Wednesday night. Litchworth and other student speakers strongly objected to the fact that students were not asked for input until after the policy was announced.

Associated Student Government had a town hall meeting to educate students and allow them to voice their opinions about the university's new tobacco policy Wednesday in the UA Union Ballroom.

The policy, which prohibits any tobacco use on campus, will go into effect July 1.?

Mary Alice Serafini, director of the Pat Walker Health Center; Ty Patterson, director of the Center of Excellence for Tobacco-Free Campus Policy; Ed Mink, director of UA Health Promotion; Carter Ford, ASG Town Hall Committee Chair and Jeff Ovalle, former student of Ozarks Technical College, comprised the panel.

The meeting consisted of an address by the panel, a question-answer session and, after the panel was dismissed, an opportunity for students to voice their opinions.

Secondhand smoke exposure causes heart disease and lung cancer in nonsmoking adults, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Web site.

There is no risk-free level of secondhand smoke exposure. Even brief exposure can be dangerous, according to the Web site.

UA student Jamie Thornton suffers from an allergy to smoke and could experience an asthma attack when exposed to secondhand smoke, he said.

"It's kind of a respect thing," Thornton said, "and I feel like people that smoke towards doorways are not being respectful of other students."

Some meeting attendees questioned why they were given the opportunity to voice their opinions only after the policy had been put in place.

"It's not unusual for policy to be developed and then implemented at a later date," Serafini said. "We used the same process in 2001."

UA implemented a policy in 2001 to ban smoking from inside buildings and within 25 feet of a building's entrance, according to the UA Web site.

The policy is being changed because it has been difficult to enforce a rule based on a distance because it's hard to determine, Patterson said.

"People just don't pay a whole lot of attention to it," he said.

UA student Tommy Rice, among others, suggested the UA designate smoking areas, but Patterson said that wouldn't work.

The problem with the idea of smoking sections is that some people will always break the rules and smoke outside of the designated area, unless they are being observed all of the time, Patterson said.

Patterson also mentioned there would always be some students who "didn't comply" with an overall tobacco ban.

Some students wondered if the university wants to have a "tobacco-free" label to be politically correct and look good.

"When visiting [another] campus, the first sign I saw was 'Welcome to our Tobacco-Free Campus...' and it had a healthy and optimistic ring to it," Mink said.

The new policy not only bans cigarette smoking, but all forms of tobacco.

Smokeless tobacco is the "oncoming mode of tobacco production," Patterson said.

The goal is to "simply address all the ways tobacco is damaging to the campus … [and] not to have to go through this process in another four or five years."

Smokeless tobacco contributes to the "desecration of campus," Patterson said.

UA is an educational institution, and students' health is a concern, Serafini said.

"[The tobacco ban] is the responsible thing to do," she said.

Consequences for not obeying the policy have not been decided yet, Mink said.

"I think that, overall, the meeting was a success," Ford said. "I think we had some excellent speakers and gave students the opportunity to voice their opinions."

More information, along with a place to ask administrators questions and voice opinions, is available at fresh.uark.edu.

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