Tobacco sales on campus banned
A policy amending the USU student code to ban the sale or advertising of tobacco products on campus was unanimously passed through the Board of Trustees Friday.
The policy’s resolution document states the policy change was approved by ASUSU Executive Council, the vice president for Student Services, the vice president’s council, USU’s president and provost before it was put for approval to the Board of Trustees.
Jeremy Jennings, ASUSU Academic Senate president, said although the ban was just recently passed, the university hasn’t had advertising for tobacco on its campus for about 30 years. He said the only thing this new code will change is prohibiting the sale of tobacco at the Quickstop.
Jaime Bradford, the Quickstop’s operations manager, said she didn’t find out about the policy change until Tuesday. She said the Quickstop will continue to sell tobacco until May 1 because it needs to get rid of the product it already has. She also said tobacco sales aren’t a large enough part of the Quickstop that the policy will really impact its business.
“It’s just not a significant amount,” Bradford said.
Jennings said the policy change is a step in the right direction, but only a baby step.
“It’s kind of like putting a Band-Aid on a huge student concern,” he said.
The real issue isn’t the sale of tobacco on campus, he said, but the fact that students have to walk through secondhand smoke as long as smoking is allowed on campus. Jennings counts this policy change as a small success on the path to bigger goals.
For years, the Academic Senate, along with other groups on campus, have been working towards a campus-wide ban of tobacco use. Jennings said they’ve worked at moving toward a ban in smaller, less drastic steps. Currently, he said they are working on a policy that would ban smoking at large events as well as in certain locations on campus. This ban has passed several levels, such as a student vote and the Faculty Senate, but the university’s deans and administration expressed concerns and have halted the ban’s progress. He said they verbally committed themselves to research to see if there is a better way to address these concerns. If they don’t find a more appropriate alternative, they will pass the ban policy on to the Board of Trustees.
As of Jan. 4, 260 schools across the nation have put campus smoking bans into place, according to information provided by the American Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation. Jennings said USU is behind the learning curve.
“We’re an institution of higher education and we’re laughing at years of (secondhand smoke) research,” Jennings said. “How can we be a research institution and ignore the facts?”
Jennings said he hopes the university will continue on the path toward a campus-wide tobacco use ban. Although the new policy change is a small success toward this goal, he said it’s going to take persistence to move it forward.
–rac.ch@aggiemail.usu.edu