Posted by Julia Leef
The Student Affairs subcommittee of the Inter-Policy Planning Committee, co-chaired by Dean of Students Rochelle Calhoun and President of the Student Government Association Matt Walsh '13, has spent the past few weeks meeting with students, faculty and staff about the possibility of making Skidmore College a smoke-free campus.
There have been three open forum-style meetings inspired by this issue that was first brought up last fall, which have gathered an approximate total of forty people to discuss their positions and opinions of a smoke-free campus. These meetings have been more or less equally divided between smokers and non-smokers, according to Calhoun, who said both parties were respectful of each other's positions on the matter.
Among the ideas discussed, Calhoun mentioned the possibility of creating smoke-free spaces on campus, as well as addressing the tendency of smokers to gather outside the entrances to buildings on campus, which many non-smokers objected to. The discussions also brought up the issue of what exactly it means to tell people that they can or cannot smoke.
The Students Affairs subcommittee, which is composed of a mixture of students, faculty and staff, will collate this information into a survey, which will be released next semester. The results of this survey will inspire the committee's next movements. The committee is also working with the Safety Committee of Human Resources, a group composed of faculty and staff members who have also been working on addressing the smoking situation on campus.