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.
Another factor that weighs in the smoking ban decision is that in July 2010, smoking will generally be banned in all public buildings and places of employment in Wisconsin, including bars and restaurants. The penalties for violators will be between $100 and $250.
In the 2008-09 academic year, governance groups on campus gave their opinions, and the Faculty Senate and the Senate of Academic Staff voted for their support of stricter smoking policies.
Even though the faculty, staff and administration have to give approval to any new policies or ideas, the concerns were first brought by students.
“This is a student-led initiative,” Duginske said.
According to Duginske, the smoking ban survey had 1,748 participants, which is one of the largest participation numbers.
Most of the people who participated were students, and 22 percent of the whole participation group were seniors. However, other groups did participate, including faculty, academic staff and classified staff.
Of the people who took the survey, 83.2 percent were non-smokers.
The largest age group for the survey was people ages 21 to 24. People who commute, live in residence halls and live close to campus were fairly evenly represented.
When asked how often they were bothered by smoke, 18.9 percent of people said they were bothered daily, but almost 30 percent said they were never bothered by smoke on campus.
However, 300 participants are smokers, and of the amount, more than 200 said they would still smoke on campus if a full ban was approved. On the other hand, more than 250 smokers said they would start to follow the current policy to avoid a ban.
At the end of the survey, people were asked which plan they would support: a partial smoking ban, a full smoking ban or to keep the current smoking policy.
The answers were pretty even, with 590 people supporting the current policy, 613 supporting the partial ban and 758 supporting the full-campus ban.
Some of the problems of the proposed ban are that there is no legal way to fine or enforce smoking policy violators, there is a general unawareness of policy and there is willful ignorance from people who still say they’ll smoke even if it’s not allowed, according to Duginske.