McCardell in Error Regarding Smoking Policy

Author: Kira Ventura

This past September, Students for a Smoke-Free Middlebury (SFSFM), of which I am a member, proposed that all Middlebury residence halls be designated smoke-free. As The Middlebury Campus recently reported, President John McCardell just approved the Community Council's recommendation that each residential hallway shall determine its own smoking policy. I would like to express my extreme disappointment in the administration's handling of SFSFM's proposal.
Despite SFSFM's demonstration of strong student support (in the form of over 800 signatures in favor of a ban) and the backing of the College staff that would be responsible for implementing such a ban (the Department of Public Safety, all commons deans, the Health & Wellness Center and the Environmental Health & Safety coordinator), the student government and administrative bodies responsible for representing the campus community have voiced continual opposition to this cause of banning smoking.
Similar initiatives to minimize people's exposure to second-hand smoke are underway nation-wide. Recently, Boston, New York City, and California have voted to restrict smoking in all restaurants. Additionally, the administrations of many of Middlebury's peer institutions, including Wesleyan, Williams and Bowdoin, have banned smoking from their dorms. SFSFM has been in direct contact with several of these schools, all of which have reported overwhelming student support following these decisions.
That said, Middlebury's administrators must sometimes make unpopular decisions in order to protect students' health and safety. The fire regulations of this campus are both at odds with this responsibility and contradictory. Students are not permitted to have candles in their rooms, yet they may smoke. Several years ago, when one student's Christmas lights left burn marks along his wall, the lights were immediately banned from residence halls.
A similar commitment to eliminate threats was evident with the implementation of the Enhanced Access System following a single assault in a dorm.
Yet although this campus has experienced several smoking-related fires, this hazard still has not been addressed. Clearly if a Middlebury student were killed in a smoking-related fire tomorrow, smoking would be immediately banned. However, the severity of past events nationwide demonstrates the urgency of eliminating this risk before tragedy strikes.
In 1998, for instance, fires caused by smoking killed 900 Americans and caused $411.7 million in damages. The fire hazard posed by cigarettes is considered so severe that the National Campus Safety Health & Environmental Management Association is considering adopting legislation prohibiting smoing in all college residences nationwide within a few years.
Must we wait until we are forced by a national ban - or worse, by a tragedy on our own campus - to pass such rules?
I disagree with President McCardell that removing smoking from dorms restricts students' rights. Middlebury students are tenants in their rooms, and just as an apartment building landlord has the right to prohibit tenants from smoking, any college may do the same.
For the 10 percent of Middlebury students who regularly smoke, smoke-free dorms would represent an inconvenience, one that several smokers have already willingly accepted. Even for the students who may not be initially accommodating, this policy would become simply an inconvenience to which those affected would soon adapt.
When I first heard of the Community Council's recommendation, I was stunned that no one had consulted the administrators who would be responsible for enforcement. Residential Systems Coordinator Mariah McKechnie stated at a Community Council Meeting that the proposed policy change is unfeasible.
It is logistically impossible to ensure that every hallway revotes whenever a student moves (a necessity in the spirit of this proposal). More importantly, deciding the smoking issue by hall ignores the fact that we all live under a common roof. Because multiple hallways exist in each building, everyone is subject to the same fire hazard if only one hallway permits smoking.
The goal of Students for a Smoke Free Middlebury is not, nor will it ever be, to tell anyone that (s)he cannot smoke.
Its members just hope to prevent students from smoking in areas that compromise the well being of the vast majority of students who choose not to do so. In order to ensure the health and safety of all students, decisive action on the part of the administration is now necessary.

Kira Ventura is a Spanish major with a double minor in environmental studies and psychology. She is from Andover, Mass.