Mixed smoke signals
Lunch on the Taggart Student Center Patio can be a haven for smokers, as the open air mixed with food and friends provides the perfect opportunity to have a smoke. And for some students, this is the best way to spend lunch, enjoying a cigarette as they do their homework or talk with friends.
But for many students, smoking is an annoying vice that befouls the air and offends others. Some students don’t like even walking through the TSC Patio when people were smoking, since they hate the smell and the smoky air.
Some students see smoking as a culturally dividing factor on campus and student views on smoking itself vary.
“I think it’s a personal choice,” Brody Coates, a business administration major said as he took a drag, relaxed and leaning back in his chair. “I know it’s bad for me, but it’s a guilty pleasure. I mean, everything gives you cancer.”
For many students, there is a marked difference between smokers and non-smokers. For the non-smokers, it is a majority belief supported by the anti-tobacco campaigns and personal values reflected by religion; for the smokers, it is a chance to be counter-cultural, something Coates points out, that is not indicative of the nation as a whole.
“I think it’s definitely counter-cultural in that you see a person smoking and you know they’re more likely to have alternative beliefs or values,” Coates said. “With smokers, you’re more likely to have a common ground.”
Andrea Milne, an exercise science major, said she does not smoke.
“I’m not a fan of smoking,” she said. “But that’s just my personal aversion. You know [with smokers] they’re going to be more open minded.”
“I’m trying to de-stigmatize smoking,” Coates said. “I’m intelligent, educated and preparing for a career. I want people to know that not all smokers are the same.”
Full-time student Thad Nicholls said of his smoking habit, “I know it’s not good for me, but it’s an addiction. It hasn’t changed who I am, but I try to be respectful with it. If I’m around a lot of people, I don’t smoke.”
When asked if he felt any connection to other smokers, he said, “There’s a definite non-[LDS] connection.”
A non-smoking friend of Nicholls, Brett Johnson, said of smoking, “I don’t think it should be considered a depletion of character at all.”
Asked whether he looks at people any differently for smoking, Johnson said, “I hope not.”
Again, stressing that this is a personal choice, Nicholls said, “People are going to make their own decisions.” He said he does not believe that smoking changes a person or makes them any different.
“It’s not a part of my personality,” he said. People who judge him solely on this point, he said, “don’t know my background; they don’t know who I am.”
Nicholls pointed out how alluring smoking can be. “Anytime you’re stressed, it’s always there. It’s always available.”
“The more I think about it, the more I like it,” student Stephen Bialkowski said. “Smoking is your friend,” he said with a laugh. “It’s always there when you need it. When I see someone smoking, I think ‘they’re not [LDS],'” he said. “I mean, I guess they’re just people.”
Computer science major Chad Coats said of his smoking, “It’s an expensive bad habit to get into.”
When asked about the students who judge or avoid students who smoke, he said, “It’s hard to dismiss people on one facet of their personality.”
He adds, referring to the exclusion he said smokers sometimes feel as they stand outside in the cold finishing a cigarette, “The distance can be nice.”
Certainly smokers are biased in favor of their habit.
But there exists at another end of the spectrum several religous denominations, including the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints which have doctrine on what can be taken into the body and hold smoking as a sin.
Wayne Dymock, the director of the Logan LDS Institute Building on campus, said smoking is just a personal choice.
He added, “My father taught me that all people have weaknesses and that some are more obvious than others.”
Dymock, like Coates and Coats, also said there is nothing that separates smokers and non-smokers, and that when he was growing up, “that didn’t seem to be the measuring stick.”
-blainea@cc.usu.edu