Well folks it is just as I feared. Intake vents and supposed “popular opinion” have manifested into right restricting policy.
As reported by the Mass Media UMB has received a 20,000-dollar grant from the Boston Board of Health to be used in a totalitarian attempt to removed cigarettes from campus.
USG President MacInnes Barker has tried to justify this overbearing policy with some staple responses. For instance his claim that 460 other campuses have successfully implemented such a policy, so what! I ask you President Barker if 460 other campuses had successfully implanted a uniform wearing policy would we do that to?
Could it be that 460 other student bodies have less smokers than we do and so the policy was easily accepted? Or could it be that 460 other campuses where bamboozled by sudden and unfairly passed policy? Just because the policy has been successful in that smokers can longer smoke on campus does not mean it is beneficial, or that the student body is happy with the decision.
President Barker also tried to assuage well-founded outrage by claiming that counseling and education would make us all happy to give up our right to smoke before he took our cigarettes away. What type of hellish brainwashing campaign does he have in mind?
Imagine your sitting in a room with some know it all telling you all this shit you already know about how smoking is bad: it causes birth defects, cancer, a myriad of other lung diseases, tobacco companies are evil and use exploitive labor tactics, and not to mention the terrible and lasting effect on the environment and there plenty of healthy alternatives and blah blah blah when can I get out of here and smoke a fucking butt!
If this seems inflammatory it should. Smokers have been given fair warning. We/they are outnumbered and at a financial disadvantage. Very soon the only course of action smokers may have to keep cigarettes conveniently close to class is public demonstration and civil disobedience.
Of course at the end of the day we all share this campus and we all know what a stressful place it is. We have common experience, working, two jobs plus class, raising kids, sharing a semi hostile living space with and edgy roommate. Everybody deals with this stress in his or her own way. Some people’s way of reliving stress may even cause stress for other people but we coexist non-the less. Some people do yoga some people are annoyed by yoga. Some people smoke cigarettes some people are perturbed by that, yet we get along. We may not like it but we are not at each other’s throats. I ask you non-smokers see it our way. We are willing to compromise. Corral us up into outdoor smoking gazeboes or something. Enforce strict punishments on those caught smoking outside designated areas. Do anything but force us to give up the one thing that gets us through our day.
You morning run is our first drag. Your time of reflective meditation whilst smelling your favorite incense is our hard nosed hacking contemplation. Your personal playlist jam session is our brave stance against severe cold, rain and wind, as we conquer the elements and smoke in spite of nature. Appreciate our point of view do not banish us.