The tobacco-free campus policy went into effect over a month ago, but designated tobacco-use areas are still being marked.
Of the 12 smoking areas on campus listed on the UNM Smoke Free Campus Web site, four are not physically marked. Also, only nine of the 12 smoking areas are circled on the online campus map.
Pug Burge, chairwoman of the Smoke Free Campus Committee, said the marking of the smoking areas was disorganized, but the group did not set out to make it easy to smoke on campus anyway.
“The whole idea was not to make this convenient,” Burge said. “This whole drive has been about the promotion of a healthy campus. We have been somewhat conservative because we knew that once we identified designated smoking areas, it would be difficult to take them away.”
Burge said the Physical Plant Department is in charge of installing the signs around campus, and monitoring that work wasn’t one of her priorities.
“It’s been a group effort, and people in PPD have been doing their very best to get this stuff going,” Burge said. “I haven’t kept a list that I have been checking twice every day.”
Win Hansen, president of Students for Sensible Drug Policy, said his organization has become the public face for smokers on campus who are displaced into “smoking ghettos” by the new policy.
“The only reason we know where the smoking areas are is because we see a lot of people smoking there,” he said. “There wasn’t a campuswide e-mail saying, ‘Here are the smoking areas on campus.’”
Hansen said many students aren’t even aware of the policy. He said the lack of information presented to smokers makes the ban less effective.
“To limit the information to the smokers is undermining your entire case,” he said. “If you want them to be more educated about what you’re doing and to not subject other people to secondhand smoke, they need to know where they can smoke. They need to be participatory in deciding the policy as it stands.”
Burge said the current signs are temporary, and she said the permanent indicators of a smoking area will be three benches surrounded by ash trays. She said she doesn’t know when the benches will be installed.
Student Health and Counseling Health Manager Jessica Taylor Spurrier said the goal of the policy created by the Smoke Free Campus Committee is to encourage smokers to quit.
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
“This isn’t about treating smokers badly or being mean to smokers,” she said. “It’s about promoting a healthier campus.”
According to the UNM Policy Manual, the smoking areas could be on campus for as long as five years, and Spurrier said the removal of the smoking areas is at the discretion of University President David J. Schmidly.
