By Michael Kennedy
The University of Louisville Belknap and Shelby campuses will be smoke-free by next June. U of L smokers will be forced to leave campus to light up. Provost Shirley Willihnganz made the announcement last week by sending out a universitywide e-mail.
The smoking ban will be phased in, with the first phase beginning Nov. 19. At this point, designated smoking areas will be established, leaving the rest of the Belknap and Shelby campuses smoke-free. On June 1 of 2010, the designated smoking areas will be removed.
On campus, reaction has been mixed.
“I think it’s a great idea,” Brooke Scott, a freshman marketing major and on-campus resident said. “It will hopefully make me quit smoking. I think it will be easier to stop and not worry about it anymore.”
Corey Cagle, a senior political science major disagrees. “University students are all adults who should be free to engage in legal, consensual behavior that isn’t doing any real harm to anyone else.”
In January of 2008, the Health Sciences Campus became a smoke-free area, and Willihnganz cited the “inequity” of having the smoking ban on only one campus as a reason to make the other campuses smoke-free.
“Smoking isn’t good for people to do,” Willihnganz said. It causes cancer, and one of U of L’s primary goals is cancer research. High cancer rates cause U of L’s healthcare costs to rise, which in turn forces higher tuition, according to Willihnganz.
“I don’t think that young people should smoke,” said Davinder Kumar, a graduate chemistry student. “Smoking is injurious to the person that is smoking. It is also injurious to people around it.”
Willihnganz said U of L will provide free nicotine gum, patches and pills through the campus health center to students trying to stop smoking.
It’s unclear what punishments may come to those running afoul of the new restrictions, but Willihnganz said she hopes others on campus will enforce it themselves.
“We’re hoping this will be a gradual cultural thing where people who see other people smoking will be able to now say ‘that smoke’s really bothering me; you have to go somewhere else to do that,'” she said.
“I think they need to tell them to put it out—that’s what the punishment needs to be,” Scott said.
Cagle said he thinks the ban will be difficult to enforce, leading students to smoke on roofs of buildings, in secluded locations or in bathrooms.
Willihnganz said she will be meeting with SGA this week to discuss ways to make this transition as smooth as possible.
The first phase is to be launched on Nov. 19, the date of the American Cancer Society’s Great American Smokeout. The University of Kentucky will also be going smoke-free on this day.
