Pitt to smokers: keep your distance

Smoking has long been banned inside all buildings at Pitt, but soon, it could be against the… Smoking has long been banned inside all buildings at Pitt, but soon, it could be against the rules to light up outside its doors as well.

Recently passed at UPMC, Pitt may also adopt the 15-feet rule, which prohibits smoking within 15 feet of any University doorway. Pitt’s Faculty Assembly, the part of the University Senate comprised of representatives from all academic departments, endorsed the resolution last month.

Pitt’s Senate Council, the counterpart to the Faculty Assembly, which is composed of faculty, Student Government Board members, the Chancellor and nine chancellor appointees, did not have a quorum at its last meeting and has not yet voted on the resolution. The Council plans to consider the smoking measure in the fall.

Patricia Weiss, chair of the Benefits and Welfare Committee, one of the 15 committees affiliated with the Faculty Assembly, said that her committee has been concerned with this issue for years, and she is simply carrying the cause.

“My job is to look at issues and matters at the University that affect the welfare of our faculty and students and staff,” Weiss said. “And that’s my committee’s mission.”

“A lot of the reason this started is because the county had passed a measure that would ban smoking within 15 feet of entrances and indoors, but when the county regulation was invalidated by the local court, there was no longer any legal compunction for the University or any other organization to do anything,” she said.

“When a number of public organizations across the county, including some restaurant chains, decided to endorse indoor smoking anyway, we called on the University to apply this [15-feet rule].”

The University has had an indoor smoking ban since 1991, but Weiss knows it’s more of a challenge to enforce this outdoors.

Though signs and notices around campus would be posted informing people of the new rule, exactly what measures will be taken to enforce the new resolution is currently unclear.

Weiss said the role of her committee is to present its views, not enforce policy. She also said posting new signs might be difficult because historic buildings on Pitt’s campus cannot be altered.

“It requires manpower and other resources – we do recognize that. But this is something the administration would have to work out,” Weiss said. “We can advise and make recommendations about policy, but since we don’t have the means to enforce policy, it’s really not our place or our job to come up with the means.

“We’re much more interested in the ends than how it’s implemented,” she said.

The resolution would prevent people from having to walk through a cloud of smoke every time they enter or leave a campus building. However, not all students want to see the 15-feet rule enacted.

“Whether or not you’re a smoker, you should have the right to do whatever you please, always within reason,” Pitt sophomore and smoker James Hennon said.

Sophomore Eric Werner, also a smoker, agreed. “I know especially when it’s cold out, nobody wants to trek across all the snow to smoke,” he said. “That’s pretty lame.”

“You step outside and you have to find somewhere else to go smoke because you can’t do it by the entrance,” Werner said.

“When they were talking about passing the smoking ban a while ago, a lot of us and people we know were talking about starting a petition against it,” Hennon said. “I would say that I’d probably be active against it.

To Hennon, the issue centers on personal choice.

“People do things every day that are harmful to themselves and the people around them and the environment, even the sun causes cancer,” he said. “But people still have a right to treat their bodies the way that they do, and no government or anything like that should have a right to take that away from anybody.”

Weiss said that Pitt’s approval of the 15-feet rule is not a “personal campaign” of hers, rather a matter in which she has to represent the interests of her committee.

“The members were concerned that when the court action invalidated the county smoking ban, there would be no further action at the University unless we took action,” she said.

“The goal of this is not to stigmatize smokers,” Weiss said. “But it is obviously a major health concern.”