Student Association is looking into adopting a policy that would limit cigarette smoking on campus and ultimately ban it within a three-year period.

At Monday night’s meeting, SA also said a donor has given at least $10 million to the university to go toward scholarships for students. Students are invited to a barbeque to meet and speak with the donor this Friday at 3:30 p.m. on the Quad, when the donor is publicly announced.

The smoking policy SU is looking into would mirror a model that was used by the State University of New York at Buffalo, now a smoke-free campus. It would require students to smoke at least 100 feet away from buildings in parking lots and phase in tighter restrictions in stages throughout the three years.

Colleges for Change, a state-funded program that operates through the Onondaga County Health Department and aims to prevent tobacco use, designed the model and has partnered with 21 schools in the state to reduce smoking on campuses, said Katelyn Upcraft, who coordinates Colleges for Change’s program with SU.

Upcraft presented at SA’s meeting about the benefits of SU becoming a partner in the program.

The plan would join SU with eight other colleges and universities in the state that are currently smoke-free, including SUNY Upstate Medical University and Cazenovia College, according to the American Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation.

Colleges for Change began to gage the SU community’s thoughts on smoking in May, when it surveyed a random sample of 1,500 SU students and employees. The survey gathered information about people’s smoking habits and attitudes toward tobacco use on campus, and 1,167 of those selected returned the survey.

Joel LaLone, a consultant and professor of mathematics at Jefferson Community College in Watertown, N.Y., analyzed the data and presented it to SA Monday night.

Almost a quarter of people surveyed at SU said secondhand smoke bothered them a lot, LaLone said. Tobacco users said they smoked cigarettes more often than other forms of tobacco, but most of those who said they were smokers also said they did not smoke every day.

Analysts consider people who have smoked within the last 30 days to be smokers, LaLone said. Using this criterion, one-third of SU students and employees who took the survey is considered smokers.

The results of the survey ‘will be helpful in determining what the best policy and enforcement is,’ said SA President Jon Barnhart.

Liz Mikula, an assembly representative and third-year architecture student, said smoking is especially popular in the School of Architecture.

‘It’s definitely part of the architecture culture,’ she said.

There are a high number of international students in the School of Architecture who smoke, in addition to people who smoke to calm themselves down from the school’s stressful and demanding curriculum, Mikula said. Students are constantly lighting up on the steps outside their classrooms, she said.

She does not have an official stance on the policy now, but said she was concerned the policy might force students to leave campus building steps to go smoke in dark, empty parking lots late at night and might face opposition from architecture students.

abknox@syr.edu

Published on September 27, 2010 at 12:00 pm