UMass student leaders said they will fight the policy change.
The University of Massachusetts Faculty Senate voted Thursday to support a policy that will ban all tobacco products from the Amherst campus effective July 1, 2013.AMHERST – The University of Massachusetts Faculty Senate, in a 14 to 7 vote, supported a policy that will make the campus smoke-free beginning July 1, 2013.
But student leaders said they will do what they can to fight the policy change.
The Faculty Senate was the last stop in the policy change that was initiated by the senate’s Health Council. The Campus Leadership Council, composed of University of Massachusetts Chancellor Robert C. Holub and other top executives, approved the proposal last week.
But dozens of students packed the senate meeting Thursday afternoon to speak against the policy change. Many were non-smokers. Some carried signs reading “You can die for your country, you can smoke a cigarette” and “I am 18+, I have the right to smoke a cigarette.”
The first sign was held by Caleb Amaral, a smoker, the second by George Williams, a non-smoker.
Jarred Rose, a member of the Student Government Association, said that group sent a letter to the chancellor asking that both that association and the Graduate Student Association should be able to vote on the policy change not just the Faculty Senate.
Government Association member Nathan Lamb said it might be time for students to contact legal services.
Student Ben Taylor felt that the university was trying to legislate morality, and he doesn’t think it will help reduce smoking. He also believes it will punish employees who would have to leave campus to smoke.
Wilmore WebleyWilmore C. Webley, who has been leading the campaign to make the campus smoke-free, said he polled students and 78 percent favor a smoke-free campus. He is a member of the health council and teaches a class called “Biology of Cancer and AIDS,” and has repeatedly conducted smoking surveys among students.
The campus banned smoking in buildings 26 years ago.
Smokers now must be 20 feet away from a building to smoke, but some say that’s hard to enforce. The new policy will ban all tobacco products, and would apply to anyone coming on campus, including staff, faculty, contractors and visitors. It would include parking lots and athletic events. The policy is similar to policies that have been adopted at more than 466 colleges and universities across the country, including at the universities of Florida, Kentucky, Oregon and Michigan.
But some students said they wouldn’t attend the university if it was smoke-free and others talked about the numbers of graduate students who would leave campus if they cannot smoke.
Ernest D. May, secretary of the senate, told students they would have two years to work on some improvements to the policy change.
Julia Lisa, a sophomore from New Jersey, said “if people want to pollute their lungs,” that should be their right.
And she said “I don’t think it (the change) should be a priority (on campus.)”