Residential Life to restrict smoking

Nonstudents will be restricted to Pershing area’s southwest corner.

By Harry Plumer

Published April 25, 2008

The Department of Residential Life announced Wednesday that the Pershing area in the southern part of campus is going smoke-free on May 1 with a few exceptions.

The announcement came in response to what Residential Life Director Frankie Minor described as an “inherited” problem.

“On Sept. 1, 2006, the University of Missouri Health Care system instituted a smoke-free policy prohibiting all smoking for their employees on their property,” Minor said. “Almost immediately after that happened we started noticing their employees flocking to the Pershing area and taking over a lot of the picnic tables and other areas we set up for students and were paid for by student fees.”

The student complaints flooded Residential Life soon afterwards.

“It got to the point where we heard two or three complaints every single day,” Minor said. “Students felt intimidated to use even their own picnic tables and stuff like that because there were always hospital employees there.”

Minor said he immediately began talking to the hospital about the problem.

“We had articles in the hospital newsletters, and we talked with them about being more respectful,” Minor said. “Once we started doing that, they started moving away from the student picnic tables and gathering on the south side of Pershing in that patio area.”

The new policy permits students to smoke at the picnic tables but restricts everyone else to the southwest corner of the Pershing area.

Some residents of Cramer and Stafford residence halls weren’t thrilled about the situation either.

“It seems kind of dumb to me,” said freshman John Hash, a nonsmoker who lives in Stafford Hall. “It’s the smoker’s business, they’ve got to have somewhere to go.”

Minor said that cooler heads would prevail in the end.

“We’ve moved the hospital employees closer to their workplace with this new policy,” Minor said. “Students will still be able to smoke in the picnic table area.”

Although the announcement said the picnic tables would be restricted to Cramer and Stafford residents, Minor said that no one will be around to check the ID cards of students smoking in the area.

“My first priority is to preserve that area as a student area,” Minor said. “That’s an area that is utilized by students quite often.”