Students should be active in discussion of smoking ban

Editor,

On Nov. 3, President David Schmidly announced he created a committee to help make the campus smoke- or tobacco-free. The committee had its first meeting last week, and the next meeting will be held Dec. 19 and 20 from 3:30 to 5 p.m. The meeting on Dec. 19 will be held in the Education Building, Room 103, and the meeting on Dec. 20 will be held in Dane Smith Hall, Room 120.

The committee has been assigned specific deadlines and at the meeting will define what our action plan and goals will be in regard to those. The more diverse the crowd is that shows up, the better our University will be represented. These next couple of meetings will be important because we will determine if our objective is to keep the environment smoke-free for nonsmokers or to aim to have a healthy student body as a whole. The rest of our plans and goals will be determined upon this.

If you cannot make the meeting times or would like to keep up with the decisions being made, we welcome your input at Unm.edu/smokefree/feedback.html. The comments are being read and will be addressed at the meeting. We also will be getting a listserv up and running, and if you would like to stay informed, please contact Pug Burge at Pburge@salud.unm.edu and put "listserv" in the title.

As students, it is our responsibility to help define what our campus will become and also to serve our community. Please come to these meetings and contribute your input. We look forward to seeing you there.

Havah S. Johnson

UNM student