UALR campus goes smoke free
A campus-wide smoking ban goes into effect at UALR. The University made the decision to go smoke-free a year ago so students and staff had plenty of time to get ready for the change.You can't miss the “no smoking” signs on UALR's campus. Chris Hardin just moved in. He says good luck to smokers claiming they don't know about the ban. "They can use that (as their excuse), but I'm not sure how well it will go," says Hardin.Hardin is a junior transfer from a community college that banned smoking last year. He supports the ban. "Well, it's cool for me because I don't smoke, so it didn't bother me at all, but other people weren't too thrilled about it," he says.Since you can't smoke on campus anymore, if you choose to smoke, you're going to have to find some place else to do it, and that means going off campus.Don't try to get around the rule by smoking in your car. That's not allowed. The associate dean of students knows it's a tough rule for some smokers to follow, so the first time you're caught you'll get a gentle reminder. After that, educational lessons come into play. "There are creative sanctions we will use such as perhaps picking up cigarette butts around campus if there are any, or educational things such as researching smoking," says Debbie Gentry.Does Hardin think it'll work? "I feel that picking up cigarette butts is probably the least that you could do being that if you smoke and throw cigarette butts everywhere but the right place," he says.Gentry says UALR falls somewhere in the middle as far as campus-wide smoking bans go. She says you can still smoke on some campuses.You used to be allowed to smoke at UALR if you were twenty feet away from the buildings.
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