Students support smoke ban

According to a recent survey conducted by UW-Oshkosh, a slight majority of people would support a University-wide smoking ban.

Representatives in the Oshkosh Student Association Assembly raised concerns that smokers were not obeying the current smoking policy, which is no smoking within 25 feet of any building entrance.

OSA Speaker of the Assembly Ann Duginske gave a presentation of the survey results at the OSA Assembly meeting Monday evening and went over many of the other UW-System school smoking policies.

UW-Green Bay has one designated smoking area in the middle of campus, while UW-Milwaukee has designated smoking “poles.” UW-Platteville has a half smoking, half non-smoking campus (smoking is not allowed on the half where most of the buildings are located) and is working to get the rights to fine violators.

At UW-Stout and most of the two-year UW campuses, smoking is completely banned.

“We’re one of the last universities to do something about this,” Duginske said.

Earlier, Emily Dieringer, a Winnebago County Public Health educator, conducted a survey around Oshkosh hot spots.

She talked to 200 people, the majority of whom were not smokers, and 53 percent of them supported the recent 75-cent tax on cigarettes, and 69 percent of them supported an Oshkosh campus smoking ban.

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1 comments

reasonable dude

Thu Dec 31 2009 17:39

This survey data is being misconstrued by the writer of this article. What's so hard to understand that in this survery, 61% of students(including 30% of students supporting the existing policy, 31% favoring a partial ban) obviously do NOT want a total ban on smoking enforced throughout the UW-Oshkosh campus, and only 39% were in favor of prohibiting smoking in ALL outdoor areas of the campus?

It's time for common sense to seep into these debates on reasonable college campus smoking policies, and for the excessive prohibitionist demands of those against smoking to be rejected by college presidents and administrators. What would be wrong here with stricter enforcement of the 25 foot rule, and for a campus smoking policy(regardless if it may require slight revision to balance the rights of smokers and non-smokers) that TRULY respects the rights of both sides, and does NOT force smokers to the closest street, wooded area, etc. beyond a college campus to smoke? For the record, I'm a former social smoker who quit cold turkey(but not one of those annoying ex-smokers, haha) stating his 2 cents!

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