Remember last September’s big news story? “Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education bans smoking on all campuses”? If you don’t, let’s climb in a time machine and travel back…to the year 2008…
Barack Obama and John McCain were fiercely battling for the U.S. presidency. The economy had not exactly begun its spiraling descent into madness. And PASSHE Chancellor John Cavanaugh made a late-night announcement to all PA state universities. The PA Clean Indoor Air Act, which had recently been voted into law (but not enacted), was interpreted to mean OUTDOORS as well. This is simply because sometimes universities hold classes outdoors, but that would make the outdoors a classroom which would somehow make the outdoors indoors. Students and faculty were shocked and forced, the very next day, to obey. A few received warnings, maybe one received a fine. Some performed “smoke-ins”, but still the law pressed on.
Fast-forward to spring 2009, today. Nobody has cared about the smoking ban since before the winter. It seems like once the snow started falling, people weren’t so worried about getting written up for smoking on campus. Now, a PA panel has ruled that faculty members and coaches cannot be forced to keep their smoke off campus without union agreement – which they will not get.
But PASSHE is STILL going to try to overrule this decision. Yep. They still think the action they took is “in accordance with the law”. AKA, they’re being incredibly stubborn. You can’t make the outdoors indoors. Change the verbiage of the Clean Indoor Air Act, instead, to the Clean Indoor But Sometimes Outdoor But Only On College Campuses Air Act.
Jeez, how did I miss this? Aren’t there even little smoking gazebos or anything? … I’m a little concerned.
Don’t know how you missed it when it happened, it was all over the news, I think CNN might have picked up on it a bit too. There are no areas on campus in which anyone is allowed to smoke. Not only that, but people are not allowed to smoke in their cars while driving through campus. There have been rumors that there will be changes so that you may smoke on sidewalks on the edge of campus or that you may smoke in your car but only with the windows up – the truth is, no one really knows what’s going on. John Cavanaugh is a doofus. But he has visited the school like twice since then and both times to an audience of like 2 people. If people really cared, they’d do something about it.
I work at a public university that enacted a smoking ban on its own. I am a reformed ‘Edinboro smoker’ – I picked it up when I went to Edinboro then quit after I graduated. I’ve never noticed a campus that smokes as much as Edinboro does. While I support the smoking ban, the interpretation of the law is dumb. Both smoking bans – my employer and the SSHE – are not indeed laws, so its hard to enforce. It’s not that big of a deal and I actually enjoy not having to walk through a crowd of smokers when I leave a building. Most of the people here that still smoke are (so fitting to stereotype) the artsy punk/skater students and the hourly food service and maintenance staff.
However, the faculty need to get with it. They are great, but as a collective group they stifle any innovation at Edinboro and around the SSHE. They have become just another teacher’s union and are following in the steps of the UAW in bringing down their industry rather than representing a group of workers. When I was at Edinboro, the faculty almost went on strike when Edinboro said they couldn’t smoke in their office! Come on.