This week students had a chance to weigh in on the potential changes to UW-Platteville's smoking policy. The student smoking review committee, which was formed under the supervision of Student Senate, held an open forum on Dec. 4.

The forum opened with an introduction detailing how students heard about the forum, an overview of the survey conducted during the previous week, and a description of the current policy that prohibits smoking within 25 feet of any entrance, exit or point of ventilation of campus buildings.

Early discussion focused on complaints that were raised about violators of the current smoking policy.

"There were approximately nine complaints from 2000-07 to campus police," Jeffrey Schwan, committee chairman, said. "Only one of those complaints consisted of someone smoking inside a building."

Schwan and Jordan O'Connell, another member of the smoking review committee, gave a description on the data they collected concerning student compliance of the smoking policy.

O'Connell said they found hundreds of cigarette butts during their research on campus.

"A lot of time I see the cigarette smoke outs dumped out with piles of butts next to them," Melia Haugen, a student at the forum, said. "I have also seen a lot of people leaning on the walls near the residence halls smoking as I walk in."

Jesse Piotroski, a former resident assistant, said that when faced with situations such as these he would normally go outside and tell people to move.

"I would receive maybe one or two complaints a month and sometimes would pass them on to campus police, but they have bigger fish to fry than to deal with people smoking," Piotrowski said.

This discussion led many of the students in attendance to debate enforcement on the current policy.""

"The campus police have told us that they have no authority to enforce the policy on academic buildings, but we are looking into that further," Schwan said.

Smokers present at the forum voiced concerns over options during inclement weather.

"I am a student smoker and try my best to obey the rules on campus," Tricia Mason said. "But during bad weather my only option is the overhang near Boebel [Hall]."

One suggestion was to build smoking huts away from academic buildings.

"I think huts would be used by smokers such as me and my friends who try to follow the policy," Mason said.

Committee member Joshua DeWitt expressed concerns about the huts.

"These huts would use up a lot of money and resources when we do not know if people would even use them," DeWitt said.

Andrew Rankin, the vice president of SUFAC, was asked to comment on how this could affect the campus financially.

"The first thing you should do is find out how much something like this would cost," Rankin said. "If this is going to cost $7,000, I don't see it as a feasibility; the administration would probably not go for something like this seeing as the project would probably come out of student fees in whole."

Mike Park, a student senator, added that Minnesota and Illinois have outlawed public smoking and that he felt Wisconsin would more than likely follow suit in the next five to 10 years.

This led to debate over whether spending money to create these huts was feasible.

"If things follow the current trend, even if the huts are built they may only be used for a few years, and if public smoking is banned here we will be stuck," Haugen said.

Most of the students in attendance did support some sort of policy change, but wanted to maintain the right of students to smoke.

"It is our choice and it is not illegal," Mason said. "Banning something on campus that isn't illegal seems like a bad idea to me."

Forum members agreed that stricter enforcement of smoking policies would be beneficial.

"I think stricter enforcement will help the issue," DeWitt said. "I think considering the number of students who support change here and in the survey the very least we can do is push for stronger enforcement of the policy."

Chairman Schwan said that he had been meeting with Rich Egley, dean of students, and was working with him to try to investigate whether campus police could enforce the smoking policy near academic meetings.

The smoking review committee will give their final presentation to Student Senate when classes resume in January.