Living on my own, I have learned that life is only what you make of it with the interactions you have. Since coming here, I have learned that most resident assistants do not understand that the smoking policy is not about stopping kids from smoking but enforcing that they should not do it on Winona State property.

Now recently I have noticed that behind Lourdes, they removed the trash can next to the smoking area. I’m assuming they hope to have less people smoking there, but all it has done is make the freshmen put their trash in ashtrays which in turn has started many tiny fires, making the value of the area depreciate even more.

Limiting the resources does not make kids go out of their way to keep a place clean but instead just adds another problem.

Coming into this school, I have talked to many people in the student body and many of the staff that choose to participate in an open, undiscriminating conversation. Some conversations start with politics and end with your favorite meal. Others can begin with where you are from and end with the rare occurrence of two people being in the same 500 foot area when a shooting occurred, but the very essence of these interactions is based on two different parties coming to one specific place and happening to get into a no-holds-barred conversation. I relate these activities to the 60s and 70s, when tensions were high and student bodies felt that they should make sure to communicate and have their voice heard.

Winona State tobacco rules are important to me, and I respect them to the utmost of my ability. I feel as though it is not right for the resident assistants to enforce a policy of not allowing for smokers to be comfortable in the specific designated areas that we are limited to.

According to Karen Johnson, in a Winonan article published last semester, “smokers now have the option to smoke on the sidewalks surrounding campus, as the streets are public property.” Now if you made the smoking area become not a place where students are subjugated to a resident assistant’s personal view of keeping picnic benches where they belong but where the student body, faculty and construction workers who work to keep our school in quality shape could come together and have conversations, I believe that you would have less students disobeying the rules of smoking on Winona State property. They might feel more inclined to stay within the current limitations.

If the proper resources were simply allowed to stay where they are, like a single picnic bench behind Lourdes and a garbage, it would at least alleviate the amount of money you pay for cleanup, repainting walls due to cigarette ashes smeared across purple paint (like the wall across from Mugby Junction), and simply enforcing a policy that is only there to benefit the rest of the students who choose not to smoke.

What I have found is although we do smoke, Winona State does not feel as though we are doing anything wrong. It is simply a matter of respect. Just because an individual chooses to spend 8 dollars to hurt themselves does not mean Winona State should have to pay to clean up after them.

Now for those students who choose to hang out with the smokers, never once actually smoking, they do it because we honestly do encourage great conversations that are critical for breaking boundaries, inspiring passion, and showing that each student really does care about what they are going to school for. They hang out with us because they enjoy the community that we create there.

In the past, Winona State had a problem with hookahs, which are bulky, gross, and tend to include a lot of coals that just make smoking a simple cigarette to a way other level. I am not trying to convince you that last year’s problem should change your policy. Actually the contrary—it is just a fad that kids will get used to and then get over just as they did with Velcro shoes and Lance Armstrong wristbands. They can learn to do it off campus.

For the ones who do not want it on their campus, it becomes a simple solution: don’t get upset that students smoke. Make the students not feel as though their freedoms are being taken away but simply make the point that the health of others is important too.

The only thing I would like to emphasis is that we do need the picnic bench in the back of Lourdes not because we need to smoke but because it is not being used. Its value is solely based on the people who use it and the conversation that can occur there.

If nothing else what you should get out of this is that some problems can tend to become worse with policy intervention. Resident assistants just follow policy, but the policies themselves are only there to ensure that smokers and nonsmokers can cohabitate without too many people getting their freedoms limited by what an individual chooses to do with their existence.

Contact Preston at [email protected]