Yeah, if only there was a place to live with “smoke-free” in the very name.
Perhaps the smokers who are deliberately moving into a smoke-free dorm with the intention of smoking there are the ones who should live off campus.
The worst experience with smoke I ever had was living at an off campus apartment with a neighbor who apparently never attended classes and just smoked all day with loud music blaring.
There are plenty of places to live if you want to wallow in poison smoke, sewage, and loud music all day and night.
A smoke-free dorm should be the choice not to deal with all that.
For the record, we’re not talking about actual second-hand smoke, but only the smell from other parts of the building. Nobody’s going to die from the smell. Even the dangers from the second-hand smoke are mostly exaggerated and imaginary, but whining about a faint little odor in a dorm is just self-absorbed and lame. What do you expect in a dorm? Like I said, get a job and move off campus instead of boring people with how “sensitive” you are to perfectly ordinary and innocuous odors.
I don’t smoke, by the way, I just don’t get bothered by other people doing it, or feel the need to put on a performance if I can smell it in a hallway.
Sure seems to make a hell of a lot more people sick than it did ten or twenty years ago. I’m guessing that there must have been literally tens of millions of people in the 1950s who didn’t leave their houses ever, for any reason. :dubious:
“Oh my God! The slightest whiff of cigarette smoke from the room down the hall has made me so sick that I’m not going to be able to go to work in the city and inhale exhaust fumes all day like I usually do!”
For every one person that actually gets sick from a vague whiff of cigarette smoke, there are probably at least 50 drama queens who either get psychosomatically ill from it due to extreme indignation and general bitchiness, or are lying about it entirely in order to feel more offended.
You see the fucking problem there? You bunch of fascists had to make every goddamn building smoke free. You just had to regulate your damn nanny state laws universally. So now reasonable people can’t shoose to live in a smoking dorm, because you won’t let there be one.
So why bother to try to compromise. I applaud the anonymous Guerrila warrior fighting the good fight against oppression in your society. Suck on the sweet sweet second-hand smoke of freedom.
And yet another anti-smoking action backfires. Lots of students smoke. Had they turned round and made some dorms smoking and some non-smoking, I would bet the overwhelming majority would support them enforcing that strictly in the non-smoking rooms.
But no, instead they have to make a point. They have to be pure and ban smoking in all the dorms. And so the rule gets ignored. But they can feel good about it and put in their publicity material that all dorms are non-smoking. Meanwhile no one is happy - the people who want (or arguably need) smoke free accomodation don’t get it, and those who want to smoke in their rooms are shit out of luck.
Yeah, not going outside to smoke is civil disobedience. :rolleyes: In my world, when you sign a contract, that means you abide by what it fucking requires.
I think you’re 100% on target. A universal ban does nothing but eliminate safe havens. If you designate certain areas or buidings, smokers will tend to be quite cooperatative. Ban it completely and they have no reason not to smoke where ever they are.
25 years ago, I was smoking in college classrooms. I smoked in the barracks in boot camp. People smoked in malls, in McDonalds, in libraries, on airplanes, you name it, and the drama queens were non-existent. You never heard people saying they were “allergic” to smoke. People just didn’t notice or care. Nowadays, the slightest wisp of smoke makes people start fainting. Has there been a change in the gene pool? I wonder why these people are never bothered by car exhaust.
Or nobody said anything because they knew they would be ridiculed by pompous smoking blowhards. My mother has asthma, and her parents smoked around her.
And for the record, I dislike cigarette smoke more than car exhaust, though it’s close. I simply don’t breathe when I’m downwind of a smoker or an idling engine, though I appreciate that this is not possible for everyone.
The interesting thing is, at Virginia Tech, I would estimate that about a third of the student body smokes, but somehow they all manage to do it outside. Funny, that.
Given that a third of the student body smokes, I would guess at least a fifth of the student body would want to live in smoking dorms. Wouldn’t it be a better policy all round to accomodate those people? Maybe even charge them a little more for the increased cleaning costs.
None of the people I know who smoke has ever expressed irritation at having to go outside to smoke (and in a Blacksburg winter, that is harsh), or a desire to be able to smoke inside, so no, I don’t think it would be a better policy.
Assuming they don’t mind going out in winter to smoke is one way. Actually asking them if they would like a smoking dorm is perhaps a better way to find out if they would like a smoking dorm.
What is a pompous, smoking blowhard? I’ve never seen or heard of one of those. The only pomposity I see is from self-righteous anti-smokers.
Back in the day, the whole conflict just didn’t exist. Smokers weren’t trying to annoy anybody, it just wasn’t something that anyone ever made an issue of or complained about. Nobody was getting ridiculed. There wasn’t a war yet.
Yes, just because they haven’t bitched about it to you means that people love going outside in very cold weather and freezing their asses off. :rolleyes: Do you even read what you’re writing?
Maybe they just keep their bitching to themselves because they see how goddamned annoying the anti-smoking people get, and they don’t want to come off that way.
I guarantee you they’d jump at the ability to be able to smoke inside. I also don’t think they’d appreciate you making the decision for them without asking them.
So when non smokers don’t complain about smokers, it is because they are scared of being ridiculed by pompous blowhard smokers. When smokers don’t complain about having to go outside it is because they mind smoking outside.
Methinks you are using somewhat of a double standard here.
Do recall that apart from saying that I don’t like the smell of cigarette smoke, I haven’t said word one about hating smoking.
What decision am I making for them? If they want a non-smoking dorm, fine, they’re free to ask for one. I won’t stand in their way. I don’t give a flying fuck if there is one or not. I’m simply stating that in my opinion, it would not be particularly productive to have a smoking dorm, since nobody I know has ever expressed any irritation at having to go outside to smoke, even when it was bitterly cold and we were all about to go inside. I stayed outside with them while they finished their cigarettes, even, because I was enjoying the conversation.
They were banned in my dorms. Also banned were cigarettes, loud music after 10 pm, and air fresheners. Anything that caused a disturbance was banned and rightfully so. If you wanted to smoke you were welcome to go outside. If you wanted your room to smell good their suggestion was to clean it instead of covering the smell with candles and glade spray. If it hadn’t been for my bitch of a neighbor who kept locking me out of the bathroom dorm life would have been awesome.
Actually, shit is worse…it’s much more likely to kill you, and a lot faster, too.
I hate cigarette smoke as much as most people, but here’s where you lose me. All of these smells aren’t equally offensive, and most of them are MORE offensive than the smell of cigarette smoke. If you were forced you to smell sewage for a day, you’d be begging to trade it for the cigarette smoke.