Designated smoking areas are located all throughout campus, but there are students who choose to smoke everywhere.
They are found lighting up near classrooms, outside bathrooms and even in the S. Taper Botanical Garden on benches.
This needs to change.
The 21 scattered areas on campus are small and uninviting.
This isn’t a light issue because some students don’t smoke and don’t want to be a part of the health hazards involving second-hand smoke.
If Sheriff’s deputies don’t fine smokers who violate the smoking policy, then why are these areas designated for smoking?
Verbal warnings are not completely effective.
Professors close their classroom doors when these careless students decide to smoke near them.
In California, the Riverside Community College district is a non smoking institution according to their Web site, the board of trustees adopted a non smoking policy as of November 2002.
Other non smoking colleges in California include Ohlone College, San Joaquin Delta College and University of California at San Francisco.
Pierce College President Robert Garber, a former Vice President of San Diego Miramar College, noticed students weren’t using the smoking areas on that campus.
He posted signs, added the locations in the schedule of classes and made them more attractive by including ashtrays and benches.
Garber saw results immediately after he stopped having to sweep cigarette butts just outside his office.
With adding more signage and better looking smoking areas, he wants to implement the same standards here.
Garber said the Work Environment Committee (WEC) is reviewing the smoking issue. The process begins with the WEC reviewing and proposing improvements.
He feels strongly that students and professors alike smoke habitually and to ban smoking all together would only take time away from class and work to walk outside of campus and light up there.
The WEC Chair Pamela Brown said, “We are very frustrated about it. This has been an ongoing problem for the last 20 years.”
With the “No smoking policy” just enacted in Calabasas a few weeks ago, it’s a wonder if a similar policy can be implemented in Woodland Hills, worse here at Pierce.
It is clearly stated in the catalog of courses: smoking is not permitted in any classroom or other enclosed facility.
Smoking is permitted in designated areas only.
Some instructors have included in their syllabus that smoking within 20 feet of classroom doors or windows is not permitted.
Not only has it become a health factor in the United States that second hand smoke can kill, but smoke travels, and students are exposed when they simply shouldn’t.
Students can get their smoking privileges taken away if this problem persists.
There are no butts or excuses for this one.