Sharing the Air

Photography by Donald Bajohr

When talking about smoking on campus, many students refer to the cloud of smoke outside the library as the area where students, staff and faculty who smoke tend to congregate. With the proposed campus-wide smoking ban still on the table, the discussion should not just include the library’s cloud of smoke but the people within it, too.

It seems as though smoking is not just an addiction to these students. Instead, it is viewed as something communal, relieving, freeing but that also comes with stigmas, entrapment and, with the possibility of the smoking ban being enacted, even more restrictions.

A Social Start

Dan Eastman, a fourth year ASL-English Interpretation student, said he fell into smoking easily. “I grew up around smokers. My parents smoke, a lot of people in my family smoke,” he said. “I saw it as a normal thing when I started it. It’s just something that happened. My friends did it.”

The social aspect of smoking can influence smokers’ current habits. For Adam McVicker, first year Fine Art Photography student, smoking used to be just a social activity. “I started smoking this past summer regularly. But before that, I used to smoke socially,” he said.

Smoking socially can be the start of many people’s habits but the social aspect of smoking is also one of the reasons that students continue wanting to smoke. For Julia