Group pushes tobacco-free campus

A University of Minnesota student group is restarting its push to make campus tobacco-free by January 2013.

The Student Health Advisory Committee is vigilantly working to gather support from other student groups on campus, SHAC co-chairwoman Michelle Volz said. They also set up an online petition for students and faculty to sign in support of the policy.

“With a campus as large as ours, there’s so much risk for exposure to second-hand smoke,” Volz said.

SHAC is trying to add the Twin Cities campus to a growing list of colleges across the state that have enacted similar policies.

The University’s Duluth campus went tobacco-free in September 2007. Minnesota State University Moorhead followed suit in 2008, as did the University’s Crookston campus in 2009. Mankato will have a tobacco-free campus beginning 2012.

Across the country, 587 colleges and universities have enacted 100 percent smoke-free campus policies — up from 160 in 2008, according to the American for Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation.

According to a 2010 survey by Boynton Health Service, 17.7 percent of University students on the Twin Cities campus said they had used tobacco in the past month.

SHAC is looking for new University President Eric Kaler’s support in making the campus tobacco free.

“We’ve got to get on this,” said David Golden, director of public health and communications at Boynton.

Kaler hasn’t yet made clear his intentions about the proposed policy.

“It’s obviously a very complicated question,” Kaler said. “What I don’t want to do is put in place policies that we cannot enforce.”

SHAC first brought the subject to former President Bob Bruininks in 2008, Golden, SHAC’s adviser, said. He said he thought Bruininks didn’t implement the policy because of concerns about its enforceability.

Those conversations in 2008 got the ball rolling with a survey conducted through the provost’s office assessing the student, staff and faculty reaction to the possibility of a tobacco or smoke-free campus policy.

According to that survey, 90.1 percent of students and 84.9 percent of faculty and staff say they have been exposed to second-hand smoke on campus, with walking across campus listed as the number one place where students are exposed.

The size of the Twin Cities campus compared to other Minnesota campuses is an impediment, said John Finnegan, dean of the School of Public Health. He stressed the importance of a smoke-free campus for the safety of students and staff.

The enormity of the campus just means the University needs to talk realistically about enforcement, Finnegan said.

“We don’t want [University police] going around looking for smokers,” Finnegan said.

Instead, he said the hope is that the policy would create an atmosphere where smoking is discouraged. Students could enforce the policy themselves, Finnegan said.

UMD health educator and smoke-free policy co-chairwoman Dori Decker said she’s seen more students and faculty following the campus policy in her three years at the school.

“We’re seeing a bit of a culture change,” she said.

UMD’s SHAC created the Breathe Free campaign in spring 2010 geared toward increasing peer enforcement of the policy. The volunteer group made up of students, faculty and staff provides “reminders in a non-confrontational and informative way,” said Decker.

Finnegan and Golden both emphasized that a policy on the Twin Cities campus would also give a push to smokers that want to quit.