pro: Derrick Sanchez
I in no way encourage students to smoke but the sad thing is after you hear Salem’s rebuttal, you will probably grab your box of menthols and not give her reasons a second thought.
As sad as it sounds, Skyline College is populated with binge smokers. Cigarettes, cigars, and any other type of nicotine and/or tobacco-enriched wrap are attached to the young college student’s hand and mouth on campus.
Smoking is essentially a form of camaraderie among the masses at school.
And I know what you’re going to say, smoking causes lung cancer, asthma, emphysema and other bad health risks. But the kids are still smoking it, maintaining this mentality: if it feels good, do it.
Sure the typical ignorant college student forgot about the dangers of smoking, but that’s what college students are; ignorant, self-conscious, and stressed from our higher education.
Cigarettes are essentially a quick pick-me-up if you’re feeling stressed because the vibrant but fragile student needs something to get him or her through the day.Once the nicotine is inhaled, it is rapidly absorbed by your blood and hits your brain, you feel a little better and relaxed. Now you’re ready for your next task at hand.
As odd as it sounds, smoking does bridge gaps. You the student most likely have something in common with the next guy: You both smoke. Go manifest your right to relieve some stress before class.
Con: Salem Admassu
Here’s a rape of a right that no one seems to be outraged enough about: the right to breathe in fresh air may not blatantly said to be an inalienable right in the constitution, but nevertheless no one would even belittle the imperative necessity of inhaling nutritious clean air when coming out of a long boring lecture or brain-tormenting class work.
I think smokers are selfish, and if there is no law to limit their selfishness, us non-smokers will just have to adapt to cigarette pollution cough by cough.
So supposedly the college council thinks that the right to smoke on a college campus is too great a liberty infringement, so much so that it has been working on accommodating smokers with designated areas for them to clutter and form clouds of toxicity in prime relaxation spots like the quad that one could have sat at for a few minutes to exhale from studious preoccupations.
And while all of us non-smokers are cough struck just from trying to get from one building to another on this constricted campus, smokers are accommodated with encouraging ashtrays and benches right in the center of the quad.
Why can’t we just ban smoking on campus all together?? The concept of designated areas merely induces alienation for smoker students and keeps non-smokers from certain specific areas. Why create such segregation? Cigarettes are health hazards anyways, why promote such a nasty habit by giving students the privilege to pollute the air, in a designated zone or not?
I write this article partly to represent the concerns and infuriation of non-smokers who told me personally that the Skyline View ought to address this salient, yet downplayed issue, concerning the fact that skyline smoker’s privilege to pollute the air is not frowned upon as sincerely as it ought to be.
The way I see it, the college council has yet to recognize who the victims are in this issue of smoking on campus. They forget that a freedom can only be endowed to one as long as it doesn’t get in the way of the freedom of another.