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Excerpts from: College campuses is latest front of smoking rights battle

By Christian Meagher The Northeastern New Online [04/17/02]

If the Northeastern smoking task force decides to make the university smoke-free in the fall of 2003, it would be the first in Boston.

College campuses are the latest battleground for smokers and anti-smokers. Since the turn of the century, cities and towns throughout Massachusetts and the nation have forced restaurants and bars to go smoke-free. Health boards in Framingham, Weymouth and Canton recently pushed for smoke-free establishments and now encourage neighboring towns to follow their lead, so as not to hurt local business.

In step with the towns, colleges across the country have gone smoke-free or are considering the move.

Locally, Smith College in Northampton banned smoking in its dorms last December and the University of Connecticut followed suit last Thursday.

A 1999 study by the Harvard School of Public Health found that 27 percent of non-commuter colleges and universities banned smoking everywhere — including all residence halls — while 55 percent allowed it in residence halls.

Despite the national trend, Residential Life Director M.L. Langlie says the university considered going smoke-free after noticing a decline in freshman requests for smoking apartments and favorable feedback on the university's four non-smoking upper-class halls. Langlie says the reassessment is not only due to the decline in applications, but also because of health concerns for students.

"It is not about whether we like people who smoke or not, it is that there is a lot of research out there that says smoking causes cancer," she said.

Barbara Aucoin, president of the Massachusetts chapter of Fight Ordinances and Restrictions to Control and Eliminate Smoking (FORCES), is shocked by smoking bans in college housing.

"I think: 'How dare they?'" said Aucoin in a recent phone interview. "They are not even trying to accommodate every college student."

She added that the smoking bans on some college campuses are hypocritical because the schools spend thousands of dollars to accommodate a handicapped or minority student, but their policies do not protect a large segment of its population.

"The choice to ban smoking should be up to the individual owners rather than the government," she said. "You take away that choice and we are not American anymore."

A graduate of Smith College and former staff member at the Northeastern College of Engineering in the late 1970s, Aucoin says she understands college life. With this knowledge of student concerns, she says the university's defense that they are doing what is best for the student is misguided.

For Aucoin, banning smoking in college housing would set a troublesome precedent. It would establish a system for "legislating morality" that can drain personal rights until there is no more freedom of choice or expression.

"This is very invasive of privacy and it'll just be getting worse and worse. I worry for the future."

For the members of the anti-smoking campaign, the smokers' complaints about loss of freedoms are unfounded.

Since its inception in the early 1980s, Northeastern's Tobacco Control Resource Center works to reflect the "true cost" of tobacco –– the resultant medical costs for the taxpayer –– in every pack.

The center advocates for local communities to help pass tobacco controls "without intimidation from the industry and the tobacco control resource center.

As a former smoker, Executive Director Kevin Kroner says he too felt that smoking bans infringed on his rights. After quitting, however, Kroner says he realizes that smoker's rights are non-existent.

"There is no mention of smoking in the Constitution," Kroner said in a recent interview. "The only notions that a restriction [on smoking in dorms] impacts are certain general notions of fundamental liberty."

Kroner says the United States has been infringing on individual liberty since its foundation, but does so through fair and equitable processes. The center supports the banning or segregation of smokers because the move preserves individual liberties and protects public health.

"Your right to put those substances into your body should extend as far as you neighbor's lungs," Kroner said. He added that it is natural to ban smoking in college housing where the conduct of one individual easily affects other people.

As a private university, it is legal for Northeastern to discriminate in its housing practices as long as it does not break federal laws that protect against discrimination based on race or religion. The same rules apply for apartment owners, Kroner says, who are legally allowed to ban pet-owners or young renters. It is symmetry like this that frightens Aucoin, who says the anti-smoking movement could be just the beginning of a steady dwindling of basic freedoms.

Langlie says the future of smoking in Northeastern residence halls will be decided in May and put into place by 2003. Though she says a system of punishments will be put into effect to enforce any changes, it will be up to students to enforce the changes in their apartments.

"We're not going to have RAs sniffing under doors," she said. "We hope the students themselves can come to an agreement on a suitable living situation."