Public smoking ban low priority for campus security
Ryan J. Garner
Smoking is banned on campus, but a stroll along MCC’s rose garden might indicate otherwise.
This could be due to the fact that MCC’s public safety has prioritized dangerous crime and crimes of opportunity higher on their list than enforcing the July 1 smoking ban, according to Steve Corich, director of college safety.
“We know about the rose garden, the bus stops, the parking lots. It’s not a hunt,” he said.
“Quite frankly, we aren’t going out of our way, because (smoking) isn’t high on our priority list. If we see someone as we’re patrolling then we stop them but we call in names three or four times a day for smoking violations,” Corich said.
“We simply refer them. It isn’t our job to punish or berate or harass.”
Thus far, interactions between public safety and smoking violators has been civilized and
there have been no official citations given for tobacco, according to Corich:
“What we’re doing is we are very low-key on our approach to these things. We stop people, ask them if they are aware of the change. We take down names, and document the warning and let them go about their day.
“For students that have violated for a second time we refer them to the dean of student affairs.”
Public safety’s stance on tobacco is different than toward other narcotics said Corich. “Cigarettes are not illegal. They’re just prohibited here on campus, same as across the street in the hospital, or in the mall.”
In situations like these, where a small contingent of resisting smokers choose to conduct themselves outside the rules, they do so at their own risk, as Corrich pointed out, “If someone is going to push it or wants to be a jerk, It’s just like anything else, if you constantly violate the rules of an establishment, soon you won’t be welcome there anymore. – If they continue to push it, they could find their ability to go to this college could be in jeopardy.”
Since the ban went into effect in July smoking has been in decline on campus, but feedback from new students such as Ivan Graves, undecided, indicates a general unawareness regarding the school’s smoking policy. “Why don’t they just make a smoking area?”
Benny Thompson, dance major, is one of many who choose to disregard the ban, “I smoke out here every day. I got warned on my first day at school.”
While the regulation seems to indicate that sidewalks are a kind of sanctuary, according to Shawn Morrison, an automotive engineering major, he was told by public safety when caught, to “go across the street.”
According to Corich, “Students are allowed to smoke on the sidewalk, anything within the sidewalk is college property, but anything beyond the curb lines ends our jurisdiction.”
Some students still refer to cigarettes as their “therapeutic timeout” as Dillan Isbell, a psychology major, said “There’s people with all sorts of disabilities, who use a smoke break to just unwind. You take a drag and then you focus on school.”
However, according to Thompson, “It’s such a pain in the ass to have to walk all across campus just for a stupid cigarette,” that at times he doesn’t go.
The littering of cigarette butts, one of the original problems regarding tobacco on campus, is also still an issue, as Thompson continued, “I’m not gonna lie, since there’s no ashtray, most of the time I just put em on the ground cause it’s just convenient, but when we had the areas, they were clean and I always threw mine in the ashtray.”
Tina Jenkins, another student present asked “If people are going to smoke anyway, why don’t they have ashtrays. What is the lesser of two evils? I know the smoke is the main issue, but I smoke so that I don’t choke people.”
