Let me preface this diary with an admission: I have been utterly lost since the election happened. I still come here every day to check the latest news on the senate races, and see what people are thinking about in the progressive community. Multiple times a day.
Since the hustle and bustle of being a University director for the Obama campaign, I have felt cold and lonely here in Buffalo. Well, our president and provost gave me reason today to fight.
Also, I am not a smoker.
Follow me...
David L. Dunn, the Vice-President of Health Sciences, sent out this email today:
Dear UB Faculty, Staff and Students:
Last year, UB convened a committee to review and explore options in order to strengthen our current smoking policy and assist UB's students and employees with smoking cessation. With representation from Human Resources, Student Affairs, and the UB Academic Health Center, the committee's work has led to the creation of the UBreathe Free initiative.
Today, the day of the American Cancer Society's Great American Smokeout, I am very pleased to announce that UB will become 100% smoke-free beginning with the 2009-10 academic year. There will be no smoking allowed within any building, on the grounds, including parking lots and green spaces, at our three campuses and at all offsite locations. Over the next few months, we will be developing the final policy and continuing to meet with campus constituent groups to finalize our plans.
UB will be the first SUNY campus in Western New York to implement a totally smoke-free campus, and one of 130 campuses nationally.
Smoking is the leading preventable cause of death in the United States and there is no safe level of secondhand smoke - if you can smell smoke, you are breathing in cancer-causing chemicals. UB will embrace a 100% smoke-free campus policy in an effort to make our environment the healthiest possible for all students, employees and visitors. In addition, a smoke-free campus is entirely consistent with our Greener Shade of Blue initiatives, and it is in line with a request from the New York State Commissioner of Health who has urged campuses to become completely smoke-free, both indoors and outside.
The point of fighting this is not for health reasons. I do not smoke, and I do not notice a difference in the atmosphere around our school at all.
Students rights have long been a debate over protection versus freedoms. In the beginning lines of Morse vs. Frederick Chief Justice Roberts opines that all students have inherent rights by the constitution, but they can be limited in terms of health and safety, or vulgarity by the principal. The Administration of a University is a wholly different animal, as it is a Public University, with state funded programs.
I have begun to fight this perverse injustice towards smokers, and non, because I believe it is the right of a student to choose what he/she does to his body. This is happening all across the country, as more and more students are having their rights to smoke taken away.
This is not a fight for smoking, this is a fight for the rights we as students have while living on campus.
Thanks for being there, Kos community.