LETTER: Don’t barricade students
To the editor:
In relation to the “Looking over the Fence” article, the upcoming tobacco regulation can also be addressed by this same concept. Many undergraduates who are attending USU are in their late teens or early to mid-twenties. Many of you have not stepped beyond the fences you have constructed that contain your identities. In the process, you have shut others out and barricaded yourselves inside without acknowledging the many similarities we all possess; smoker or not, we are all human. As I write this, our world is being significantly impacted by an economic crisis we have never experienced on a global scale. Wars are destroying lives and devastating countries. People are being thrown out of their homes. And the upcoming presidential elections will determine where our country is heading and the policies which affect the rest of civilization. There are already too many barriers which keep people separated that this new proposal has the potential to sever people even more. This policy is, in effect, to satisfy the status quo.
To quote ASUSU Academic Senate President Jeremy Jennings, “It’s not a hard thing, but it would make a big statement.” What exactly is the “statement” being made? By depositing smokers into a corner of campus is it an attempt to define what you consider to be “undesirable”? That is the main “statement” I am hearing in this policy. In the current crisis we are in, I find more logic in channeling our energy to discover ways we can help each other instead of figuring out ways in which to divide our campus. Whether we like each other or not, we all hold a place within our communities; and our capacity for expressing common courtesy and respect for beliefs that may not be our own is the underlying intellect we as humans possess.
Suggestion: try “looking over the fence” and see that someone else’s life is being impacted by your policy. Perhaps you may also realize that our college experience has the potential for each of us to develop skills which go beyond academic knowledge; we have the opportunity to learn tolerance for others irrespective of differences in our beliefs.
– Esther Calvert