Column: Smoke and mirrors from Res. Life

By Elizabeth Eberlin
May 2, 2008

I hate being told what to do and always have.

Being told in no uncertain terms that I have to do something ticks me off like nothing else, especially if the rules I’m being told to follow are born of an unfair social or moral bias, or even worse, if the rules make no sense.

So, when I read last week’s article and editorial in The Maneater about the smoking ban in most of the Pershing area, I wanted nothing more than to indulge my wild desire to buy a pack of the stinkiest Marlboros I could find, wander out to Pershing and light up at every nonsmoking picnic table in the whole damn place until I got picked up by MUPD.

I can count on two hands and maybe a foot the total number of cigarettes I have smoked in my life. I’m perfectly aware that smoking causes many kinds of cancer and that many people find the smell and even the very presence of cigarettes offensive. And I’m all for public indoor places being made nonsmoking. But restricting outdoor smoking, especially in an area as small as Pershing, is ludicrous for several reasons that have not yet been explored.

First of all, though the effects of second hand smoke have been hotly debated for as long as I can remember, I really don’t see the harm in outdoor smoking, especially at MU where car exhaust, power plant spew, pesticides for the flowers and God knows what else is already floating in the pure Missouri air.

Though breathing deeply in the exhalations of the nearest smoker is not very beneficial for one’s health, there are a whole slew of worse particles in the air that aren’t being discussed.

Furthermore, having two or three “smoking tables” in the Pershing area is like having the proverbial pissing section in a pool.

You can designate a space as small as you want, but everyone is going to get the same effect anyway. It’s called diffusion.

The most appalling part of this situation, though, is that the Pershing smoking ban was obviously not conceived out of concern for the health of students at MU.

It was implemented as a way to keep “non-students” out of a specific part of campus.

Yes, Pershing area is primarily for students.

And yes, we paid for it.

But instead of asking those oh-so-scary and “intimidating” University Hospital employees if they could scoot over and let us sit, or, God forbid, hang out with them for a little while, we’ve decided to deny the very people who take care of us in emergencies the right to share our space. If those “non-students” were professors or parents, would we be more willing to share?

I don’t like being told to do something for stupid reasons, and I’m sure that the hospital employees at MU like it even less than I do.

If I really believed the university or the other students at MU were worried that smokers at Pershing were killing themselves and others slowly, I might buy this whole smoking ban thing. Unfortunately, it seems like we’re only concerned with making sure that we kill ourselves slowly without having to deal with the people who have the skills and training to fix us up later on.

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