I don't smoke, although I did for a year or two when I was in college.  I'm not really sure how the university thinks it will enforce this ban (are they really going to have public safety officers giving tickets to every student they see smoking on campus grounds, or something?).  It's doubly unfair because large chunks of the student body generally live on campus, so by interpreting the law in this (bizarre, unjustifiable) way they're denying students the right to engage in what is otherwise a completely legal activity.  One can see some justification for banning smoking in dorms (fire risk especially - a lot of colleges also ban burning incense and candles, so banning cigarettes can be justified along that line without even talking about the second hand smoke risk), but little to none for banning it outdoors.  There is absolutely no scientific evidence that outdoor second hand smoke imposes a health risk to anyone other than the smoker.  This is all about social control, which is absolutely ludicrous coming from a state public university.  If this law had to do with anything other than smoking, you can almost guarantee the University would have found some other way to interpret it.  I imagine the legal challenges will come fast and thick, which is great but also sad, because of how much tax payer money will be wasted on lawyers trying to defend the indefensible.

Pick up one of these these phones and say you were just nearly trampled by a group of men who were chasing some woman in the direction of some other part of campus. The police will converge where you say they were all headed, and you can smoke in peace.

I would advise anybody not to smoke cigarettes, however, I would still grant them the right to smoke; drug prohibitions (as I have argued previously) tend to be socially harmful, and we as individuals should have the right to make our own choices even if we sometimes choose to endanger our own health.  This is a particularly strange case since the prohibition is results from a re-definition of the word "indoors".  I have to agree with the protesters that the university should offer them one or two designated smoking areas.  If possible, marijuana as well as tobacco should be considered acceptable in those designated smoking areas.  After all, marijuana, unlike tobacco, does have some legitimate medical uses.

So if there's a fence around the property, that counts as an enclosed area, right?

- derumi (del-me)
"Bobby Fischer? Man, that guy is crazy!" - Mike Tyson

The reason why this happened is simple. Have you ever met somebody who worked in University Administration or (even worse, ugh) Campus Housing Administration?* You take a bunch of power hungry people who have no problem enforcing their version of morality or social control on everybody. Ugh. And to think I tried to sign up as an RA my sophomore year to pay some of my horrific bills. Good thing I got rejected.

Anywho, at least elected officials can be voted out of office. Judges can be de-benched or recalled. But administrators are subject to no oversight save for expensive court cases which are way beyond the cost of the average college student. So that's why you see crap like this happening.

*As an aside, apparently the same type of people who think this is a groovy career choice also get together to run your reunions. A recent letter inviting me to a reunion then devolved mostly into a Libertarian Party style request for funds in obscure denominations for vague reasons. Actually it was absolutely nothing like a LP style request because at least the LP explains what they need the money for and makes it somewhat amusing. Not "We need 73 people to donate $57 each to help out the administration because the recent tuition increase to $39,995 doesn't cover all their imported rug expenses!" or something. This is pretty much why when I attend in a few days I am not registering and I hope to slip silently in and out like a ninja. And boost as much free stuff as possible.

**As a double aside, is anybody else creeped out by the fact that most of the "reunion love" from schools seems to go to those people who are in the older age brackets? Am I the only cynical person who wonders if the universities aren't trying to charm their way into some lonely old person's will at the last moment?