The Mississippi State University Executive Council passed a motion last Monday that officially makes MSU’s campus completely smoke-free, including not only tobacco smoke but e-cigs, vaporizers, and anything else that creates a cloud of smoke. 
    Vice President of Student Affairs Regina Hyatt said the ban is scheduled to take effect next fall and will encompass the entire campus. 
  “We want this to be positive,” Hyatt said. “Not that MSU is trying to tell people how to live their lives but to create an environment that is healthy for everyone.”
  While this ban was drafted by Hyatt and voted on and approved by the Executive Council before becoming official, one of the first things the Student Association President Roxanne Raven did after taking office was passing a resolution stating the student body of MSU desires a smoke free campus. Both Hyatt and Raven accredit this resolution as the main reason the ban found itself on the Senate’s agenda.
  “We were the driving force behind it 100 percent,” Raven said. 
  A similar ban was proposed a few years ago but failed to pass, and Hyatt said she believes a lot of the reason it was successful this year was due to the SA’s work gaining support within the faculty senate, the MSU Staff Council’s support, and support from the Health and Wellness Center’s Smoking Cessation program. 
  “It was finally the right time to get everyone on board,” Raven said. “The primary goal was to relieve strain on non-smokers. It was also a bit of a recruiting issue too, we were losing students to other SEC schools because we were not smoke-free.”
   According to Hyatt, MSU is among the last of its institutional peers to adopt a campus-wide ban. 
   Hyatt said the ban should take place next fall after MSU spends this semester and the summer making sure everyone is aware of the change and what it means. 
  “We have a lot of work to do to inform the community,” Hyatt said. 
   Raven said the ban, and to a greater extent the resolution behind it, aims to create a cultural change rather than establish a route of disciplinary action.    Hyatt did not say fees or similar actions are expected to take place, but rather that the ban would allow for people to request smokers extinguish their smokes – at least while they are on campus.
 “We intend on taking an educational approach rather than a punitive one. The goal is a change in behavior rather than to seek out smokers or anything,” Hyatt said. “It’s not like the campus police are going to go hunting down smokers.”
 Hyatt said people will likely be fine smoking in their cars, and nothing about the new ban affects any previously established policies on smokeless tobacco use on campus, which is already banned inside university buildings. There will also be no designated smoking areas.
 Hyatt said she would encourage habitual smokers who are either unable or unwilling to curb their smoking while on campus to take advantage of some of the programs MSU provides to assist in quitting such as the Smoking Cessation program.
Editor’s note: The original story stated the ban was voted into place by the Faculty Senate last Monday, not the Executive Council. The Senate did approve the ban, but it was not official until the Executive Council’s vote on March 28. The original article also neglected to mention the Staff Council’s support of the smoking ban. The Reflector regrets this error. 
 

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Bek Yake | The Reflector

Smoking ban at MSU