District looks to implement a procedure that will enforce the campus smoking ban.
Jesse Hofford
– Staff Writer –
In the fall 2011 semester, police officers will be heavily enforcing a “Tobacco Free for You and Me” smoking ban at all of the STLCC campuses. The district is currently working on a unified enforcement procedure.
“We all want to do it consistently so that people aren’t giving tickets and warnings on one campus and some more drastic result on another campus,” Linden Crawford, interim vice president of student affairs said. The district wants to make sure that since the ban was a district-wide decision, the whole district applies it in a formal matter.
This first semester acted as an informational piece. Crawford said in order to “get the information out to the campus community” that the college is now tobacco-free. Plans are being made to move to a stricter ban policy to further diminish on-campus smoking. Although smoking has been reduced due to the smoking ban initiated on Jan. 2, the school wants to be completely smoke-free.
As it stands now, students and faculty are encouraged by the smoking ban’s web page to make students who are seen smoking aware of the ban by asking if they know about it.
Crawford said students who don’t know are usually very cordial and will comply with the ban.
However, she also said if a student is resistant or is repeatedly told about the policy, then students can “call campus police and campus police will come by and inform them that there’s a no smoking policy.”
Currently, there is no information regarding the ban’s details yet such as the disciplinary measures people will face and how the new policy will be enforced on campus.
