The campus smoking ban took effect almost a month ago, and while students are adhering to the new rules, some are simply finding new places near campus to smoke, creating problems for residents.
“It appears that people are respecting the policy on campus,” said Kay Bales, vice president of student affairs. “Students seem to be doing well to accommodate to the change.”
Bales said the university has placed trash cans near the borders of campus to dissuade smokers from littering, one is located on Petty Road near Robert Bell.
Another method used to reduce problems is ticketing students breaking tobacco related laws, which one student has personally experienced.
Brandon Brown, a sophomore sociology major, was smoking on Petty on Aug. 20 and received a citation for littering. Brown said he was the first student to get a ticket in regards to the smoking ban.
Carl Pipkin, a senior telecommunications major, said he supports the ban because smoke from cigarettes makes it difficult for him to breathe.
“The people I hang out with generally don’t smoke, and those that do live off-campus, so I’ve heard almost all positive reactions,” he said.
Pipkin said he thinks problems smokers and residents face off-campus could be resolved by stronger citations.
Elizabeth Robertson, a junior nursing major, lives in an off-campus house adjacent to the former LaFollette smoking section. She said people use her property to cut through to the neighborhood or university, and now some are using the near-campus area to smoke.
“I don’t even mind so much that they smoke there, but they could just not throw [the cigarette butts] on the ground in our yard,” Robertson said.
She and her housemates put up a chain to prevent people from disturbing them during the night. They were advised to leave the chain up 24/7 when they contacted University Police Department to complain.
“Before, I could avoid the smoking lots if I wanted to,” Robertson said. “Now I have to walk through their smoke because they’re right on the edge of campus on our pathways.”
“As much as I’m not in favor of smoking, I think we should leave the smoking lots as a part of the campus,” Robertson said.
Some smokers are reported to sit in the street and disrupt traffic when they move off campus to smoke.
Brown said one of the reasons people move into the road is due to the lack of sidewalk room.
“If there’s one or two people out there, they are pretty good about staying off the road,” he said. “If there’s a big group, it overflows into the road and people get careless.”
Brown said he’s talked with several other people about the smoking ban, and many believe that returning at least one of the smoking sections to a central area would solve some of the problems.
Bales said the university is working to solve the problems with different methods.
“I think we’re certainly moving down the road of being a tobacco-free campus, and we’ll continue to work toward that goal,” she said. “[We want] people to respect others people’s property by disposing properly of their trash.”
