College is stressful.
There are deadlines to meet, papers to write and extracurricular activities that make demands on your time. Not to mention there’s work, family and church (if you’re into that sort of thing).
Like many, you may choose to alleviate some of this stress with tobacco – that is, unless you attend the University of Texas at Arlington.
The university is considering a measure that would make the use of tobacco – all tobacco, dip included – illegal within the school grounds. This includes student’s cars, which is considered private property under federal law.
According to CBS 11, the decision to ban all tobacco products is the brain-child of a 15-member committee, which included leading school administrators and committee chairwoman Jean Hood, vice president of human resources at UTA. “The overall goal is to have a healthy workplace,” Hood said.
A healthy work place? That’s the overall goal? Then I suppose any food items approaching 1,000 calories will also be prohibited. Goodbye, ice cream and pizza – and any carbonated and/or flavored drinks.
With this new health-conscious goal, will morning calisthenics also be included with price of UTA tuition? Let’s also get rid of all those unhealthy elevators and force people to take the stairs. Have a wheel chair? Well, just think how healthy you’ll be once you finally make it to the top. You can use your newfound arm muscles to write UTA a thank you letter.
And while we’re at it, let’s move the whole university out of the city so the students don’t have to breathe this horrible air polluted by industry. Whatever it takes to further facilitate UTA’s intrusive concern into its student body’s health.
In the interest of full disclosure, I’ll admit that I smoke. I’ll also admit that it’s a filthy, expensive habit that has harmful side effects and can affect others who are around the smoke.
That said, there should be certain restrictions in place to protect those who don’t wish to smoke, or to experience flavor country second hand. That’s perfectly reasonable and fair.
However, UTA already has such restriction in place. According to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, “Smoking is banned within 50 feet of a building, window or air intake system. Violators are fined $10 for the first offense and $25 for a second offense.” The tickets can be waived if the violators agree to enroll in a smoking-cessation program.
Perhaps UTA should focus more on enforcing the current smoking restrictions in place instead of this knee-jerk reaction of banning all tobacco products.
“I’m not a smoker, and I personally do not care for smoking,” Joel Chaverri, an Iraq war veteran working on his master’s at the university, told the Star-Telegram. “What I can’t stand more is taking away individual freedoms. Smoking is not illegal, so if someone wants to do it, they should have that right.”
This is exactly what UTA is doing.They are infringing on personal freedoms and individual rights. People don’t pay money to a college so that it can dictate their morality and deny them personal freedoms like so many mothers. If anything, people go to college to get out from under the thumb of such authoritarianism.
Smoking affects those around you, which is why it should be confined to a designated area. This ban on tobacco, however, affects everyone. Once you give away the personal freedoms of one group, everyone else’s is also up for grabs.
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