A proposal to ban smoking across campus was defeated at the University Senate meeting on Apr. 9.‘ The University Senate, the chief governing body at Stony Brook, opposed the ban 17-16 with two abstentions.‘ ‘ ‘

Marianne Zacharia, community resource manager for the Tobacco Action Coalition on Long Island, said she attended the Senate meeting in support of the smoking ban’s subcommittee. She said it seemed like a lot of the voters at the meeting could have been more educated on the proposal, and they could have put more time into reading the subcommittee’s Minority Report. ‘I don’t believe that a lot of people even looked at or read the report,’ she said. ‘

According to the report, dated Mar. 1, the Campus Environment Committee at SB developed the proposal to institute a campus-wide smoking ban last spring. The proposal states that if passed, smoking would be banned from all areas on campus, indoors and out, over the next three years.‘

The report also says that the minority does not support a total ban on smoking, but does recommend that the existing smoke-free policy on campus be revisited. According to the report, the current policy prohibits smoking within 15 feet of a building.

Zacharia said that the proposal was third on the Senate’s agenda for the Monday meeting, and the University’s President, Dr. Shirley Strum Kenny, left the meeting before voting took place. ‘

‘I have a feeling that no one kept an open mind about it,’ Zacharia said. She said that at one point during the meeting, there was a lot of yelling and controversy, and one person compared supporters of the ban to Nazis. ‘The point is we want to get them to stop smoking here, and help them to quit smoking,’ she said.

Kate Valerio, a health educator at SB, said that four students presented a petition supporting the smoking ban at the University Senate meeting. According to the petition, a little over 700 students were in favor of the ban. ‘Their effort was an attempt to have the ‘silent majority’ of non-smoking students heard,’ Valerio said.

The Graduate Student Organization (GSO) and Undergraduate Student Government (USG) both passed a resolution in opposition to the smoke-free proposal last fall, according to the Minority Report.‘ ‘

Louis Esparza, a member of the GSO Executive Board and a cosigner of the Minority Report, said that he is in favor of the current smoking policy, but he does not support a total ban because of hardships it could cause for people who choose to smoke. ‘Smoking outdoors is not an illegal activity under New York State law and a ban would not be enforceable,’ Esparza said. He added that University Police have said they cannot issue tickets against anyone who smokes outside.

Craig Brodmerkel, a graduate student at SB, said he wasn’t surprised that the proposal didn’t pass because it would be hard to enforce a complete ban. ‘People should be able to smoke outside if they want to,’ he said, and added that he is not a smoker.‘

Currently, campus-wide smoking bans are being implemented on other campuses across the country including SUNY Upstate Medical Center and Indiana University. For now, SB will not be included in that list of schools, but there have been talks of updating existing policy. Supporters of the ban say they are still hopeful and think that this campus will eventually be smoke-free.