After two years of being a tobacco-free campus, Ball State has added a designated smoking area to the edge of campus, adjacent to Petty Road. Except for this small area, the campus will remain tobacco-free.
Since the ban was implemented, smokers would gather on the borders of campus, in areas like Petty Road, sometimes disrupting those who live in that area.
Kay Bales, director of student affairs, said in an email to the university the smoking area was designed because of "a responsibility to be a good neighbor."
Talia Bannon, a resident of Petty Road and senior fashion merchandising major, welcomes the new boundaries.
Bannon has lived there for three years, and said students tend to use her property as a place to smoke. Bannon and her two roommates do not smoke.
“My roommate can’t keep her windows open at all," Bannon said. "If she cracks them open, our whole house smells like smoke."
The smoking section has not just been unpleasant in odor, but also dangerous. Bannon has had to call the fire department twice to extinguish a stump in her front lawn that has caught fire.
“I just looked out our window and was like, ‘Oh, our stump is on fire—again,’" Bannon said. "So we went out, poured water on it and waited for the fire department to get here. We had to make a police report and everything.”
People would also come and set up lawn chairs on Bannon’s driveway, park cars on their property and sit on Bannon’s and her roommates’ cars while smoking.
“I don’t think they’ve ever actually come up on our porch, but they’ve gotten close," Bannon said. "One time it was the middle of the night and my roommate pointed out that someone was in our front yard doing flamethrower things. This guy was just playing with fire in our yard. It was so weird.”
Bannon and her roommates found out about the new smoking section from the campus-wide email. They did not request the area, she said.
Even though the smoking area is still close to her house, it is fenced in to provide boundaries and will hopefully alleviate some of the problem, Bannon said.
The University’s decision to create a smoking area was to alleviate safety concerns and address complaints the university has received, Bales said.
“Over the last two years, we have received complaints about the number of people gathering on the roadway at a given time that would impede traffic, as well as people standing and littering on private property," Bales said. "There are defined boundaries around the smoking area, so it is very clear what constitutes the designated smoking area."
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