Stephen Wills is not pleased with UNM’s anti-smoking policy, and he let the UNM Smoke-Free Environment Committee know it at their meeting on Wednesday.
“My grades dropped because of this,” he told the committee at an emergency meeting.
The meeting was organized to discuss the Northrop Hall smoking area, which faculty say is sending smoke into the building itself. The committee will meet again on Oct. 7.
Wills said he loses study time to walk to and from the designated smoking areas. He lives on campus and studies outside the Student Residence Commons halls, which makes it difficult to access the smoking areas quickly, he said.
“What I would like to see — and I know this has happened in the past — is an exemption,” Wills said.
He said that when smoking was banned inside the buildings on campus, the residence halls remained smoking areas for two years. He wants to see a similar policy to allow students to smoke outside the residence halls for a period of time. He said it would also work to create more smoking areas close to the residence halls.
Pug Burge, head of the committee, said she had a reason for not creating a lot of smoking areas.
“We were very cautious about creating too many smoking areas, because we knew that if we gave out too many designated areas, it would be difficult to take them back,” she said.
Wills said he feels he should be allowed to smoke close to his home, since he pays rent to live in the residence halls.
“The problem is … to me, this committee and this school are pushing their beliefs and their rights onto me,” he said.
The committee thanked Wills for his feedback but did not commit to making any specific changes in the policy regarding residence halls.
The committee met to fine-tune several contested aspects of UNM’s smoke-free campus policy. They also discussed moving the smoking area at Northrop Hall, creating a designated smoking area for patrons of events at Popejoy Hall and creating an exemption allowing people to smoke at tailgate parties.
John Geissman, earth and planetary sciences department chairman, came to the meeting to advocate moving the Northrop smoking location. He presented a petition with close to 100 signatures from people who feel the smoking area should be moved.
Geissman walked with the committee to spots around campus to pick a new location.
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
The committee did not make a final decision on where the smoking area from Northrop would go, but they did identify several possibilities. Their preferred location is on the north side of Popejoy Hall, across from the SUB. The other spots are on the walkway south of Northrop and across from Woodward Hall.
The committee also talked about creating an exemption from the normal smoking rules for performers and patrons of Popejoy Hall during special events.
Jerry Davis, representing Popejoy at the meeting, said it would show respect for the performers to allow them to smoke.
“We’re dealing with, in many cases, foreign cultures,” he said. “Like, I’ll throw the example out of Russian ballet dancers, who smoke fiendishly, you might say.”
The committee did not reach a decision on whether to create a new smoking area for Popejoy.
Another topic of discussion was the possibility of allowing smoking at tailgating events, which would allow smoking at the entire tailgate area instead of having a separate smoking area at the events. The committee did not decide whether to create the area or not.
The committee is planning to remove all smoking areas on campus within five years. Burge said she hopes that by then students will be prepared for the change.
