When I was 5 years old, I asked my dad what smoking a cigarette was like. He lit one for me and watched as I inhaled, coughing afterwards for minutes extended by regret. “You probably won’t ever try that again,” he said. Through unorthodox parenting, personal health or a combination of the two, I have no interest in smoking a cigarette.

I refer to secondhand smoke as “cancer clouds” and I repeatedly suggest to my father that he end his habit of 33 years.

My own feelings about cigarettes aside, I feel that ETSU’s policy for a tobacco-free campus is a failure.

It may look nice on the brochure, but the cigarette butts surrounding the buildings are not so photogenic.

Deanna Bryant, administrative assistant of the English Department, agrees that ashtrays should return.

She informed me that a mockingbird is making a nest beside Burleson Hal, among the trash that once went into the trashcans designated for cigarettes.

Smoking is a bad habit, but ETSU’s administration is not unfamiliar with its own bad habits. Several times a week, I see students and faculty members across campus with a cigarette in hand.

Some are issued warnings, a “slap on the wrist” that compares to being told not to run in the hallway or wear something that exposes your armpits while you are exercising.

Unsurprisingly, Public Safety has nothing to do with the process of issuing a warning or more aggressive punishment.

The Dudley Do-Rights on campus serve as the policy’s primary troopers.

Sara Styles, ETSU junior, suggests coordinating more places for smokers. “I’m a smoker,” she says, “and I do go to the breezeway when I smoke, but it sucks being moody the entire day without the freedom to do what many people in the country have a right to do.”

In regards to a university environment that prohibits students from smoking on campus, senior Isaac Wilson says, “We had a smoke pit at my high school. The policy is ridiculous.”

Another case against the policy is the number of students who smoke in their cars on campus where the parking issue has yet to be mediated.

If the university truly sought a “healthy, sanitary environment,” why are they stopping at cigarettes and not extending the policy to caffeine or an alternative to the coal-fired steam plant?

If not allowing students to smoke on campus is in honor of respect for their health, should the administration not also be concerned with the environmental damage and general waste that can be prevented but is ignored daily, just like their policy?

I am not asking that the policy be lifted. I am simply suggesting that it be lifted with the return of smoking kiosks or enforced with a veritable fine.

Beyond ETSU politics, I will state the obvious that smoking cigarettes is a destructive habit and that quitting is guaranteed to extend your life span.

The same goes for dirty coal, administrators.

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