Students, Faculty Hope to “Breathe Easy” On Campus

Signs outside of the College of Business state that smoking is not allowed on the verandah. | Samantha Battersby/The Minaret

Over 600 college and university campuses have gone completely smoke free, including 12 in Florida.

The University of Tampa is on its way to join this growing trend, through the work of Breathe Easy UT, a group committed to educating the public about the hazards of cigarette smoking, while offering means to help current smokers quit.

Senior public health major Margaret Haff is the student wellness coordinator here at UT who is a driving force behind the Breathe Easy campaign. Along with other public health students and faculty members, she is planning on submitting a proposal to Dr. Vaughn and other senior staff members recommending the placement of four smoke “zones” where smoking will be permitted on campus.

The idea of the zones is to limit the amount of smoke in the air in order to allow non-smokers to enjoy a fresher environment.

“We’re looking out for asthmatic students; we want campus to be beautiful,” Haff said. “We’re not telling people that they can’t smoke. We want to emphasize that we respect your right to smoke, but we want to breathe easy.”

A large amount of research has been put into this proposal for where the smoke zones will be placed. Public health students not only got hundreds of signatures in favor of this proposal, but they also talked to on-campus smokers to get their input.

“One of the research components was finding out where these zones would go if it was passed, so we had students go around and interview smokers specifically, because we knew it would affect them and we wanted to have their voice heard,” Haff said.

The smokers that were interviews pointed out on campus maps the four areas where they would want the zones to be placed the most. The public health students then put these areas together while taking into account high-traffic areas to avoid, and came up with their proposed solutions.

Senior biology major, Kenneth Jones believes that “smoking zones” will only push him to smoke outside the zones and more often.

“I think I’ll find other places to smoke, like in between classes while walking to them.  But I’d try and go out of my way to stay away from them. Designated smoking areas make me want to smoke more and since I want to quit then I wouldn’t visit areas like that. I also know it’s gonna piss off a lot of faculty too. I don’t like that faculty and some students, more faculty though, smoke right outside the building doors, at least I am 30 feet from a door way,” Jones said.

Meanwhile, the Breathe Easy students are preparing for their upcoming nationally sponsored event, Kick Butts Day, which will take place on Mar. 21, which they will hopefully get Hillsborough County elementary schools involved with as well. Similar to the Great American Smokeout, the students will have tables to educate people about the dangers of smoking. There will be information on how to quit, and also the opportunity for smokers to test the risk they are putting their lungs at by using a spirometer machine, that can measure the age of your lungs. It was found during the Great American Smokeout that people who considered themselves just “social smokers” had lungs that aged to 65 or 70.

Dr. Mary Martinasek, a public health professor with a background in respiratory therapy, knows about the dangers smoking can cause a body,

“I worked as a respiratory therapist for 30 years in a hospital so I’ve worked one-on-one with people who had radical neck surgery, who’ve had lung cancer, and I’ve seen the devastation, so for me to be able to contribute in any way I can, to see a bigger change, such as at the University of Tampa to be able to help people in a greater number will be extremely rewarding,” she said.

To take a step towards helping smokers here at UT quit the habit, a smoking cessation specialist was hired for group or individual sessions. During the Great American Smokeout, over 100 signatures were gathered of smokers who pledged to stop smoking.

“They’re just addicted to the cigarette, they want to quit and we asked them why they wanted to quit smoking,” Martinasek said. “And they said they realized it was bad for their health, or whoever’s close to them wants them to quit smoking, or they have a child and they want to quit smoking.”

Some student smokers on campus feel that the “smoking zones” won’t be helpful on campus.

“I don’t think its a bad idea but its not a good idea either. The campus is big enough that we should be able to smoke where ever. If they wanted to ban it or move it to specific areas it would make smokers feel like the awkward and shunned crowd. I understand it being moved a few feet away from entrances to avoid second hand smoke but having to walk to a designated area to light a cigarette is a form of violation of personal rights. We go to school here too and there’s a decent percentage of students who smoke,” said a senior communications major that wished to remain anonymous.

Breathe Easy is hoping to also hand out nicotine patches and gums to make it easier for smokers to quit. Gina Firth, Associate Dean of Wellness here at UT, hopes to see this proposal of zone smoking go through for personal reasons, as well as what she believes will be for the greater good of UT.

“I have asthma, so when I walk into a cloud of smoke, my asthma gets triggered and I wheeze and I have to use my inhaler,” Firth said. “And for me just to have to walk into a building and to have to walk through that smoke without a choice, I don’t really think that that’s very fair.”

However, Firth also believes that the idea of the campaign is not to make on-campus smokers angry or refuse them the right to smoke.

“I just want smokers to know that we’re here to help; we’re not here to make them feel bad, or to push them into a corner. We want to work together on this issue. Because it is a health issue, not only for them, but for people who don’t smoke and we just want to do this together,” Firth said.

The proposal of the smoking zones will be submitted in the coming weeks.  Haff says that she hopes UT will join the list of smoke-free colleges by 2014, like they have set in line with the partnership of Hillsborough country and through the wellness center.

Caroline Metell can be reached at cmetell@spartans.ut.edu.