Perhaps the third time is the charm, or at least Carly Caminiti, former vice president of smoke.free.slu is hoping so, after the proposal to drastically scale back on-campus smoking was put on hold for the second time. In the May meeting of the President’s Coordinating Council, University administrators again recommended that University President Lawrence Biondi, S.J., delay a decision on the matter indefinitely.
“The PCC wants to make sure theymake a good decision with the appropriate steps,” said Student Government President Samantha Howard, who was present at the meeting. She continued to say the PCC wants time to gather more information before reaching a decision.
Although smoking policies will remain the same for now, the PCC did encourage smoke.free.slu to promote its anti-smoking message on campus.
As a result, Caminiti said the chartered student organization is in the process of setting up a program to encourage smokers to quit through a series of informational sessions beginning this fall. Caminiti represented the organiztion at the May PCC meeting.
“I think that right now [the PCC feels] that there are so many policies in place for SLU that they would rather make it a social campaign than an actual policy,” she said.
According to Caminiti, Biondi, said at the May PCC meeting that he wanted time to “reflect and pray” on the issue before any decisions were made. However, she said she didn’t feel that the issue was being placed on the back burner.
“I hope his prayer and reflection [will] lead to a smoke-free campus,” she said.
One concern with the policy was a lack of an implementation strategy, said Vice President of Student Development Kent Porterfield, Ed.D., who was present at the May PCC meeting. He also said that he didn’t feel that the decision to table the issue should necessarily be read as resistance to the policy or its suggestions.
“I really thought it was a very productive and civil conversation,” he said of the May PCC meeting. “There were a lot of great conversations back and forth. I think [Caminiti] feels like . we’re making progress.”
In addition to expanded plans to market the idea of quitting smoking and encourage smokers to students and faculty only in parking lots, Caminiti said that her sentiments on the matter remain firm.
“Smoke.free.slu will definitely not stop until a smoke-free policy is passed,” Caminiti said. “The work that we did last year was incredible; it went from being a non-issue on campus to being the issue on campus.”
Smoke.free.slu, which won the Office of Student Development’s Outstanding New Student Organization Award in April, was chartered during the last academic year by the Student Government Association. The organization’s members work to promote their ideal of an essentially smoke-free campus, where smoking would be restricted to parking lots and city property, like sidewalks on Grand Boulevard.
