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The Tobacco-Free Campus Initiative (TFCC) seems to be stuck in limbo, despite months of debate and effort.
Despite the controversy surrounding the potential smoking ban and the circulation of several surveys, the TFCC has yet to submit its report to University of Maine officials.
“I don’t have any answers because there aren’t any to give,” said Lauri Sidelko, director of Alcohol and Drug Education Programs and co-chair of the TFCC.
The committee is compiling a report for university officials, which Sidelko hopes to submit by the end of the semester.
“I know it’s quite controversial, and people are frustrated with how long the process is taking,” Sidelko said. “The committee has worked hard to figure out the best way to go about doing this, and it was important to us to get as much broad based information as possible.”
The TFCC has based its research on many different resources and has been inspired by Tobacco Free U and other universities that have become tobacco-free.
Tobacco Free U is an organization that focuses on college tobacco education. Its members sent the TFCC a guide to becoming tobacco free, titled “Momentum: Creating A Guide To A Tobacco Free Campus,” which is a step-by-step process the TFCC has considered. Along with Tobacco Free U, the committee contacted the University of Iowa and the University of North Dakota for input on becoming tobacco free.
Sidelko said the TFCC is between “step one” and “step two.”
“Step one was doing the needs assessment and other foundation research on how it will affect the campus,” Sidelko said. “Step two will be for us to take the report and offer different options for the campus [to the UMaine administration].”
Sidelko stated that the committee is goal driven and has no deadlines. She hopes the committee will establish a process for becoming a tobacco-free campus sometime during the semester.
Independent from the TFCC’s evaluations, Daniel Hart, a second-year business student, created a survey on the Announcements and Alerts folder on FirstClass about the potential smoking ban. Titled “Smoke-Free Campus Survey!”, it was seven questions long. Hart created the survey for a research project for English 317 – Business and Technical Writing – and was surprised with the results.
“Some smokers said it’s their right to smoke and other smokers gave scientific explanations for smoking,” Hart said. “Non-smokers said how much they hated walking through clouds of smoke.”
When asked about his opinion on the potential ban, Hart felt “it would be pretty cool” if the campus became smoke-free.
