About a dozen students marched into President David Schmidly’s office on Thursday to deliver a petition calling for an exception to the smoking ban.
The petition, which had 415 signatures, requests a lift of the smoking ban outside the dormitory areas for the next two years.
Schmidly wasn’t there to take the petition, but University spokeswoman Susan McKinsey accepted it on his behalf.
McKinsey said the president is aware of the request for dormitory smoking areas.
Student Stephen Wills, author of the petition, helped organize a rally to gather signatures. The group assembled at La Posada and then marched across campus.
Wills said the petition asks for a two-year exemption because he wants to lengthen the transition period and give residents more time to adjust to the policy.
Wills said the designated smoking areas near Hokona Hall and Redondo Village are inconvenient for smokers and aren’t safe.
“The two smoking areas they have, there’s no area for us to really study at,” he said. “One smoking area is really poorly lit, so a lot of the female students don’t like to go out there at night.”
Freshman Katie Zamora lives in Hokona Hall and said making an exception to the ban around the dorms would inconvenience residents.
“There are areas where they can go to smoke if they would like to,” she said. “It’s just kind of a courtesy thing.”
Senior Chris Fortson said he attended the rally because he’s concerned about
individual liberties.
“I don’t even smoke cigarettes, personally,” he said. “There’s some people that decide that they don’t like it. They want to limit people to a certain area. Well, you could start doing that with anything.”
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Fortson said he thinks UNM should go back to its old smoking policy.
“It makes more sense … if you just have to be a certain distance from the building,” he said. “It’s easier to enforce.”
Zamora said the smoking ban should not be changed because it promotes a healthy campus.
“Secondhand smoke is a really big issue, and a lot of times it ends up hurting more people who don’t smoke than who do,” she said.
