New Smoking Policy, Hashed Out

The new smoking policy fails to provide adequate information as to how it will be implemented next semester on campus.

Starting Jan. 1, 2013, students, staff, faculty and visitors will be allowed to smoke in only five places on campus. The general area of each of the five locations is labeled on a small, nondescript map included within the policy, but it fails to specify what the names of the locations actually are.

When contacted about the new policy and, more specifically, how it will be implemented and enforced, Director of Campus Safety Ken Miller declined to comment. Operations Coordinator Bayrex Rodriguez did mention, however, that Campus Safety is not “the smoking police,” and that the policy is expected to be carried out through a “community effort.”

The policy outlines a similar strategy, one where everyone is not only expected to simply follow the policy just because it’s the policy, but to “encourage others to comply” as well, and even “courteously inform the individual offender of the policy and request their compliance.” In this case, the “offender” is – somewhat unrealistically – expected to ever so kindly put out their cigarette. The ramifications for noncompliance? The possibility of “disciplinary action” or “removal from campus,” both of which are vague at best.

This also brings into question how the policy will be enforced upon someone like a professor or a visitor. Will they, too, be disciplined? Escorted off campus?

In terms of who will be most affected, the school has considered the “needs and concerns of smokers and non-smokers alike” in the creation of the new rule. The new policy does not directly impact non-smokers, other than the school’s call to enforce the rule and, of course, how it will be positively influencing their health.

For smokers, the campus-wide e-mail that was sent out moves quickly from informing about the new policy to detailing the ways Rollins can (and will) help you quit smoking. Although informational, the message’s judgmental tone is not particularly subtle about Rollins’ disdain for your personal decision to smoke.