The Foothill-De Anza Board of Trustees unanimously approved creating smaller, more segregated cigarette smoking areas within existing locations at De Anza College in their July 12 meeting.
Controversy surrounding De Anza’s smoking areas prompted the school to reevaluate their placement on campus. Due to complaints, the areas will be moved further from school entrances and be smaller in size.
De Anza College Health Educator Mary-Jo Lomax says that the 5-year-old policy has been in need of some alteration since the allotted smoking areas have crept upward toward classrooms doors and windows over time.
One major area of concern has been the E parking lot near the Child Development Center, where smoke is known to seep from the designated area to the children’s playground.
Lomax emphasizes compromise between the opposing viewpoints. “They already feel like second class citizens,” she says. It was her idea to create smaller areas within the ones, with the possibility of more benches and umbrellas for these scaled down zones, if the budget allows.
An ex-smoker himself, Manuel Sardinha, a De Anza College student and business major, along with other non-smokers have voiced complaints to school authorities about clouds of second-hand smoke drifting closer to school entrances.
“I try to get through it as quickly as possible,” explained Sardinha, as he maneuvered himself through the throng of smokers in the C-lot parking area.
“I’m not so worried about getting lung cancer when I’m getting to class, it’s just the smell that bothers me,” said Adam Feeney, a De Anza College student and physics major.
“We pay to go to this school, we have the right to smoke,” Darius Dyer, business major, said. However, Dyer says that if his smoking were bothersome to a classmate, he would put out his cigarette.
“One of the reasons I smoke on campus is because this is a public institution. It’s really not against the law to smoke here,” Marissa Kapana, math major, said.
Opinions from the anti-smoking side have been voiced as well.
Jackye McClure, a De Anza College instructor for the administration of justice department, would like to see a completely smoke-free campus. As of July 10, 420 community colleges across the nation are 100 percent smoke free.
Coming from a smoking household, McClure supports the prohibition of smoking cigarettes. She believes that prohibition is “a practice whose time has come,” she says. McClure worries about public safety and health concerns, and urges students to be more conscious of the dangers of second hand smoke.
