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Tobacco users could face more restrictions if a University of Cincinnati Student Government Association (SGA) recommendation is taken up by the UC Board of Trustees.

SGA co-directors of health and fitness Matthew Strohhacker and Natalie Holmes-Lau made a presentation on a tobacco-free campus initiative Wednesday to be voted on during a joint-governance session March 8.

“This is only a recommendation to the university president, Board of Trustees and administration,” said Alan Hagerty, Student Government president. “We’re not voting on whether or not campus is smoke-free or tobacco-free … It’s just recommendations so they have their own considerations to take in when they make the final decision.”

A tobacco-free campus policy would prohibit not only the use of cigarettes, but also electronic cigarettes, cigars, hookah and smokeless, oral tobacco products on university property — which is
public property.

The current smoking policy for UC’s Main Campus, put into effect in January 2006, disallows smoking inside buildings, athletic facilities and vehicles owned by the university, as well as smoking within 25 feet of buildings.

UC East Campus currently has a tobacco-free policy, which was adopted in March 2007.

Strohhacker and Holmes-Lau presented their research, as well as online survey data collected by a smoking-policy taskforce UC President Greg Williams formed last October in an effort to gauge whether or not members of the university community would be in support of making UC a tobacco-free campus.

The survey — which was available on Blackboard to any UC student, faculty or staff member — was kept online for a period of three weeks in October 2011.

During that time, 2,530 members of the university community responded, with 58.6 percent of respondents expressing support for a tobacco-free campus.

SGA members discussed the benefits as well as potential challenges to adopting a tobacco-free policy in preparation for an upcoming joint session between Faculty Senate, SGA and Graduate Student Government constituents where the resolution will be voted on.

Matters such as the way the policy would be enforced have not been decided, but if the tobacco-free policy were adopted, an implementation committee would be formed to establish the necessary steps for enforcement and methods of communicating the policy changes to members of the university.

“It’s something that basically every school that has put together a policy like this has done,” Strohhacker said.

As of January 2012, there are 258 colleges and universities that have tobacco-free campuses, according to the American Lung Association.

There are four schools in the state of Ohio that have tobacco-free policies: The University of Toledo Health Science Campus, Ashland University, Mount Vernon Nazarene University and Hocking College.
“We would be the first large state school to go tobacco-free,” Strohhacker said.

If the bill receives enough support from the university community, the university could begin the process of implementing a tobacco-free campus policy — a process that could take anywhere from six months to two years to be put into effect, but would have to go through the UC Board of Trustees for implementation.