Student Senate has been aiming to reduce the negative health effects from smoking on Bradley’s campus for years — at least since the group first proposed making Bradley a smoke-free campus in November 2014.
Senate made headway on this goal Wednesday when the Smoke-Free Campus Referendum passed during Student Body Officer elections, with 1,249 votes for and 346 votes against expanding Bradley’s non-smoking policy to cover all of campus, except for certain zones.
Smoking and second-hand smoke has been proven to be detrimental to people’s health, so the smoke-free campus proposal is a good idea in theory. However, there are some major issues we see with the plan.
First, “smoke-free campus” is a misnomer. Student Senate is proposing six allotted campus areas for smokers. If there are zones on campus where individuals can smoke, then our campus is not smoke-free. For students who signed petitions or voted on ballots, the name was misleading.
Also, the zones would most likely cost a decent amount of money. When a representative from Peoria’s Hult Center for Healthy Living told Student Senate they would need to build bus stop-like buildings for the smoking zones, there was no explanation ready for this funding.
We commend Senate for attempting to obtain student feedback through open forums, but students in general are under-informed about this important topic that the group is passing. Solid plans, including funding, enforcement and concept, should have been cemented before this went on the SBO election ballots.
Senate hosted a campus-wide forum about it’s smoke-free initiative recently, and senators were unable to answer questions students and faculty had about their plans and ideas. This should have been a signal to senators to return to the drawing board and make more concrete plans.
However, even if there are solid plans in place, we wonder how they will be enforced. Senators have expressed frustration in the past about trying to enforce the rule concerning standing at least 15 feet away from buildings when smoking.
During last year’s forum, senators said this new plan would function on the honor system, but Senate would consider involving tickets.
Until the current rules can be properly enforced, it would be irresponsible to spend time and money creating a stronger rule that will perhaps not be enforced any better.
There needs to be some serious planning done on how these objectives will be carried out. Limiting smoking on campus could potentially better the health of students, faculty, staff and the surrounding community, but the initiative needs stronger plans backing it.
With the new student body officers elected, it stands to see how they decide to tackle this issue.
