Blowing smoke

On Wednesday, UB officials announced the UBreathe Free initiative, which will ban smoking on campus at the start of the 2009-2010 school year. No one will be allowed to smoke in buildings or on the grounds of all three campuses, including in the parking lots.

The administration expects the student populace to believe that banning smoking on campus will do more than create a more bitter smoker.

There comes a point where decisions cease to be about the safety of the people and become purely motivated by a desire for control.

In honor of The American Cancer Society's annual Great American Smokeout, UB has announced it plans to ban smoking on each of its campuses, creating healthy little students, safe from anything damaging or subversive in the world.

First of all, this is an asinine attack on personal freedoms. Banning smoking inside of buildings is one thing; typically the air mass is more stagnant and the particulate matter that makes up smoke is better able to stay compacted enough to damage tissue. But outside? In Buffalo? We students understand how heavy the winds here can get, so creating a safe space for a non-smoker is literally a step away.

Second, this is logically unenforceable. While UB has the right to ban smoking, or anything else for that matter, on its three campuses, even if the ratio of university police officers to students grows to 1:1, there are so many nooks and crannies in the architectural nightmare known as UB that even the most inept smoker could avoid the police for the length of time it takes to take a puff.

UBreathe Free has not stated the charges that will be given to any violators, leaving smokers to wonder what the punishment for breaking the rules will be. There are countless smokers at UB who will violate this act. How much time will smoking citations suck from the Student-Wide Judiciary? This will only be a bureaucratic nightmare for UB's enforcement of more important problems, such as thefts and assaults.

Time to burn some money, it seems. Here's an idea that those in charge of this program should take to heart: Take the money saved by scrapping this insipid rule and spend it on education programs that have been proven to work.

Better yet, create designated smoking areas, where smokers can blow smoke in each others' faces without offending the general masses. Smokers can still smoke, and those who don't want their hair, clothes and lungs to pick up the fumes can continue on their merry ways.

Will those living on campus extinguish the flame to appease the administration? Of course not. Are those making the rules expecting dorm and apartment residents to take a walk or drive off campus every time they need to light up?

Smokers are going to smoke until they decide to quit, and no force on Earth will push them ahead of their own schedule. The responsible thing to do is offer them help when they want it, instead of cramming it down their throats.

Since when is it the university's job to mold our culture and limit our choices? Administrators are drifting away from a "freedom of" mentality to a "freedom from" mentality, where any one who is made uncomfortable has the right to minimize the rights of others.

We are adults and we can deal with such problems by ourselves.