Student Union

Last night, Student Union Senate held a forum on the tobacco ban and also voted on Student Union’s official response.  An array of viewpoints were expressed at the forum, and students were active participants in the discussion regarding SU’s appropriate reaction.

Senate passed a resolution reacting to the ban by a margin of 15-5 (see below for the resolution itself).  The resolution calls for greater communication between the administration and students, formal administrative recognition of the importance of student input, and administrative reevaluation of the tobacco ban’s implementation. 

The recently announced tobacco ban has been an extremely controversial subject over the past week.  As a result, on Wednesday at 9:30 in DUC 276, Senate will be holding an open forum to discuss student opinion regarding the ban.  We will also discuss the appropriate response to both the ban itself and the process by which the decision was made.  This will directly follow a presentation from Executive Vice Chancellor Hank Webber at 9PM, in which he will address the state of sustainability at WashU and the delay in presenting the university's Strategic Sustainability Plan.  We will begin the forum with about 15 minutes of gauging student response to the ban, but the majority of the time will focus on figuring out the appropriate response while taking student input at the same time.

Click here to view view the transcript of this address.

STUDENT BODY PRESIDENT JEFF NELSON:

Good afternoon—

Last week, the University announced that our campus will go tobacco free by July 2010. In light of this announcement, many students have posted comments on the Student Union website creating a vigorous debate around the merits of enacting a campus wide smoking ban. I encourage students to keep this discussion going, but today I do not want to talk about the smoking ban itself. Instead, I want to talk about the process by which the smoking ban decision was made

Attachment: 19 April 09 Student Involvement in Decision Making.pdf

So the University wishes to make Washington University in St. Louis a smoke free campus by July 2010.  I feel that such a ban, while in the spirit of health and protection, fails to make campus a place for all students. Though the smoking population of campus may not stand in the majority there is no reason to banish them from our campus. 

So long as smokers are able to respect a certain distance from all building entrances there is no reason why both smokers and non smokers alike cannot co-exist on the Danforth Campus.

I respect the health concerns of many students and I urge them along with others students passionate about this issue to get involved in the conversation.