Confessions of an on-campus smoker

I was scared at first. Would they find me, capture me and electroshock me into submission? Would my jacket smell even more like festering tobacco for lack of ashtrays and other receptacles? No, though the smell is still apparent.

Although the University of Montana enacted the campus-wide tobacco-free policy last fall, there is still some smoke hanging in the air. Literally.

"I would feel less guilty if they didn't take the ashtrays away," Gil Filar said while smoking outside the Liberal Arts building Monday.

He and a group of friends were on break from a class, and having no time to walk to the edge of campus, simply lit up not 10 feet from the door and even closer to a campus-owned truck.

"I'm flagrant about it," he said.

So my friend and I lit up with them and chatted about the irony of the situation, though maybe we were just sad to be singled out for getting addicted to this expensive vice in the first place.

Maybe, though, the ban on my habit has the opposite effect and makes me crave more.

"I didn't fiend before as much," sophomore Billy Dinnell said. "By the time you get to the edge of campus, you want to smoke a whole cigarette."

The campus truck drove off without a word, and I put the cigarette out and threw it away inside, huffing and puffing three floors up to French class.

I feel sorry for Sarah Bennett, who sits next to my smelly coat in class every day. Well, maybe I would if she wasn't a smoker, too.

"I smoked on the edge of campus today, felt like a badass," she said.

Bennett is among the growing smoking population that realize what the policy intended in the first place.

"I feel awkward about it," she said. "It made me realize I might actually be offending someone."

Waving her goodbye, I smoked another half of a cigarette walking up to the Kaimin office to start this very story. That next set of stairs wasn't especially kind.

All right, maybe moving to the edge of campus isn't so hard. Maybe I will clear out a little lung tar during the walk.

As I later approached the edge of campus, a throng of students were lighting up between classes, forming a wall of smoke as cars passed by.

Maybe administrators didn't see it coming, but junior Jonathan Alexander sees it clearly.

"Visitors driving by see a lot of smokers," he said Monday afternoon.

Sophomore Kathrine King was among them.

"It's kind of obnoxious," she said, though she complies anyway, with some grievances.

"There tends to be some weirdos looking for spliffs at night," King said, suggesting an element of danger to the campus resident.

And R.A.s are the ones coming down on their residents. They have the authority to write up students for insubordination (a minor citation), though it hasn't been any worse than that. According to Dean of Students Charles Couture's office, no violations have been referred to his office, as per the Student Code of Conduct.

Putting out my third cigarette in as many hours, and near an ashtray for a change, I checked my email for the good news I was looking for: the enforcement policy.

As it turns out, Public Safety is limited. Shelley Harshbarger, operations manager for Public Safety, wrote in an email, "Since smoking is a ‘policy' violations, citations cannot be issued.  Officers have responded to a few complaints of people smoking but the responding officer is just allowed to advise the offenders of the campus policy."

So, is the policy effective if it doesn't necessarily stop us jerks from filling the air with cancer? Well, what Sarah said lit something in my nicotine-riddled brain — that the policy more or less forces you to reconcile your decisions (and addiction) with the health of others.

In good conscience, I didn't smoke another cigarette on campus Monday. The money, the trouble, the obvious health risks, it all starts to dawn.

So maybe it's time to quit.

Well, after just one more.

brooks.johnson@umontana.edu