A row of silver boxes hangs on the wall outside Hibbard Hall at UW-Eau Claire, each emblazoned with a picture of a cigarette and the words, “Smokers’ Station.” Tobacco users know to throw their smoldering cigarette butts in holes punched in the sides of each box.
Just a few inches above most of the cigarette butt receptacles hang black-and-white signs, each bearing an icon of a cigarette crossed through by a red line accompanied by the words, “No Smoking in this Area.”
Those signs are the definition of a contradiction – the receptacles seem to beckon smokers to puff tobacco in the very places where signs prohibit the practice. The situation isn’t just at Hibbard Hall: Signs banning smoking hang near cigarette receptacles along the walls of other campus buildings too.
“It doesn’t really make sense to me why it would be right next to an ashtray,” Marshall Carver, a UW-Eau Claire sophomore, said of the “no smoking” signs, noting the placement of the signs and cigarette receptacles seems contradictory.
Phil Rynish, the university’s student president, acknowledges the ashtrays and nearby anti-smoking signs present a persistent reminder that the campus’s current smoking policy is “broken.” It’s a problem he said a committee on campus hopes to fix soon when it completes a set of recommended changes to the school’s smoking rules.
Early last year, Chancellor Brian Levin-Stankevich formed the committee – comprising four staff members and a student, Rynish – to draft recommended changes to the smoking policy. Teresa O’Halloran, special assistant to the chancellor, said this week the committee was nearly done drafting its recommendation and expected to meet with Levin-Stankevich by the end of this month to discuss it. She said the university hopes to enact a revised smoking policy by the end of this semester.
O’Halloran said the recommendation isn’t public yet, and she declined to release a copy of the committee’s work. Rynish also declined to discuss the proposal.
Current rules ban smoking in all university buildings and within 25 feet of residence halls and the campus’s Children’s Center, O’Halloran said. “No smoking” signs prohibit the practice in other places, mainly near building entrances.
Students interviewed for this report say they generally are OK with the current policy, but noted there are problems with it. The side-by-side ashtrays and “no smoking” signs are one issue, but so is a lack of enforcement. At least a dozen cigarette butts littered the ground under a “no smoking” sign on campus on a recent day, evidence that smokers are puffing where they’re not supposed to.
Butting heads
Various university groups have tried changing the smoking policy, but their ideas have at times contradicted one another.
In December 2010, the University Senate, which comprises faculty and academic staff, recommended banning all tobacco products on campus.
At about the same time, the Student Senate officially opposed a tobacco ban, calling instead for a “sensible” tobacco policy. Student leaders urged the university to keep smokers away from building entrances, heavily trafficked areas, residence halls and the Children’s Center, but allow them to smoke elsewhere.
UW-Stout in Menomonie has banned tobacco on campus since 2010, and hundreds of other colleges in the U.S. have adopted similar bans.
Though people familiar with the committee so far have declined to comment on its recommendations, they have offered a few details about what the school’s future smoking policy might look like. For instance, Rynish said the committee isn’t recommending a tobacco ban, as some previously have proposed.
And as for the seemingly misplaced “no smoking” signs and receptacles outside Hibbard Hall and other buildings? The new policy should fix that.
“The ash receptacles will be placed only in locations where smoking is permitted,” O’Halloran said.
source: www.tobacco-news.net
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