Yale fails to protect nonsmokers' rights

BY RACHEL KAMINS

V. STEPHANIE CARENDI/YH

"Smoking is not permitted in the public areas of University buildings, except where specifically designated, as a measure to protect non-smokers from the adverse effects of passive smoke. For the same reason, smoking is permitted in sophomore, junior, or senior student rooms only if all the occupants of a given suite agree that their quarters be a designated smoking area. Since freshmen do not choose their own roommates, smoking is not permitted in any freshman room or suite."

Again, it may seem to smokers as though the University is cramping their lifestyle. But consider the actual experience of everyday life on campus: smokers pervade the paths around campus and cloud up the airspace around any benches that please them, even those right outside student rooms. If they are handy with a screwdriver, they can dismantle the smoke detectors in their own rooms and light up there as well.

I grant that citizens of America still have the right to choose to destroy their lungs and slowly die disgusting, phlegm-ridden deaths. Yale's administration cannot write laws to change that fact. However, as the governing body of a private institution, it has rights of its own, which most definitely include restricting smoking on its land and in its buildings.

I propose that it continue to do so, not in some inappropriately parental attempt to tell smokers that they are being bad, but in a belatedly respectful effort to tell non-smokers that they have the right to breathe clean air. As things stand, students in classrooms and dorm rooms with windows are frequently subjected to secondhand smoke coming in from outside or sometimes from a nearby room.

I don't have to detail the reasons why a person might wish to avoid cigarette smoke. As a result of the widespread understanding of tobacco's harms, many individuals are choosing to stay away from cigarettes, and many public and private institutions are helping to keep cigarette smokers away from them. Here, though, when a smoker plops down on the bench outside my window and burns through half a pack, the prevailing sentiment is that I should not get mad at him. I should instead go away to some other room where I can sit undisturbed by air or light from the outside world.

That's not what I really want. I really want to breathe fresh air whether I'm outside or inside sitting next to a window. I don't believe that smokers should have the run of the campus, polluting the lungs of helpless breathers like me. I don't believe they should be chased out of town, either. There is a middle-ground solution that respects both smokers and non-smokers. The University of Washington in Seattle has a 100 percent smoke-free policy for its residential halls, enforced by signs posted outside requesting that people refrain from smoking—not altogether, but at least where it will affect the breathing air of the building's occupants. UC-Berkeley has a similar rule, with the smoke-free radius around each dorm defined at five feet.

Yale is one of the many Ivy League schools that allow smoking even inside dorms. However, it is at the forefront with its noise pollution policy, as I discovered from a quick survey of other colleges' handbooks. In fact, Yale details at length how loud noises are detrimental and obnoxious to those who do not wish to hear them and are to be permitted only under strictly controlled circumstances. Good for Yale—but how many people die each year from noise pollution?

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