Editorial : Student Association fails to appropriately gather student input on smoke-free campus

Student Association began working on its smoke-free campus initiative more than a year ago. Since then, SA appointed Vice President Jessica Cunnington as leader, created a committee to spearhead its implementation, discussed ideas, has gone back and forth between a full and partial ban and acknowledged openly the whole process was a lot harder than expected.

But the process for drafting a smoke-free campus initiative lacks student involvement. Several weeks ago, Cunnington asked SA assemblymembers to gather student input by talking with some of their friends. She said that approach, rather than random surveying — as was originally planned — would be easier and faster. It is also lazier.

Plans to make the campus smoke-free have been brought up at nearly every SA meeting since March 2010, and President Neal Casey has adopted the initiative as one of his main goals in office. SA must match the emphasis and priority of the initiative with equal public discussion and engagement.

Many students and employees smoke on this campus. Although smoking increases littering and unhealthy air quality, changes to campus smoking policy directly affects far too many people to go forth without concrete, tangible input from the campus community. Simply asking friends or walking up to students to get ideas does not effectively gauge student opinion. SA must have quantitative evidence that students support a smoke-free or partially smoke-free campus.

Last week’s meeting left off with the hope that a formal resolution for SA to vote on would be drafted by Monday’s meeting, the final meeting of the semester. If SA is still gathering student input — something Casey said last Monday — this resolution draft seems premature. SA should table and distribute surveys that will show the percentages of students in support of varying degrees of change. Perhaps SA could send out a campus-wide email, like Casey did for MayFest, plainly stating its plans, and request student input. At the very least, that would give students a chance to know exactly how their representatives plan to move forward with this initiative and potentially limit the right to smoke on campus.

A smoke-free campus garnered plenty of support from outside organizations, such as the Onondaga County Department of Health, Syracuse University Health Services and multiple national organizations. Casey and SA should not view this initiative like Casey did his run for presidency — as uncontested and easily won.

SA members should be sure to gather feedback from a representative sample of smokers and non-smokers, even if it means approaching and surveying students smoking on the streets. Passing a smoke-free initiative, after appropriately notifying and engaging a large — and representative — sample of students would be a true success, unlike the top-down project SA has taken on thus far.