Connector Staff
The Student Government Association (SGA) presented their first step towards creating a tobacco-free campus at UMass Lowell with an event called the “Great American Smokeout,” featuring Tami Gouveia, the executive director of Tobacco Free Mass.
“The Great American Smokeout” featured key members of the SGA including Chair of Campus Life and Environment Amanda Robinson and President Andrew Ladd. Their objective was clear: to expose the facts and myths about tobacco use and e-cigarettes.
Gouveia and the students passionately hammered out well-known and obscure facts about the dangers of smoking and tobacco use to its users and those around them.
They said that tobacco usage is the number one cause of preventable death in the United States of America, and that 99 percent of smokers begin before the age of 26. Not only that, but they relayed staggering statistics on the effects of secondhand smoke.
Using this factual evidence, they explained their why removing the use of tobacco from UMass Lowell would make the campus healthier next fall.
SGA Vice President Keith Lewis says he believes that making UMass Lowell a smoke-free campus is a necessary change. “ Students have told us that they’re tired of having to walk through smoke on campus. Hopefully we’ll have the campus tobacco-free by next fall,” said Lewis.
Personal testimonies and convictions were also used as a springboard when a student-speaker told the story of how her father passed away when she was a child. He was not a smoker, but he died from stage four lung cancer as result of long-time secondhand smoke exposure.
Trustee Phillip Geoffroy says he fully supports the movement. “Some things are worth fighting for, and the health of our peers and our community is one of them,” Geoffroy said.
The organization stated that they are here not only to help the nonsmokers avoid secondhand smoke, but also to provide cessation services to help current smokers quit and become healthier. They urged students to try quitting smoking for a day and let it turn into weeks, months and ultimately a healthy lifetime.
The facts and testimonies were embraced with open arms and applause by many, but students and others in favor of tobacco use came out in full force to have their voices heard. While remaining calm and respectful, the dissenters let out a blitzkrieg of opposing comments and questions.
The first opposing argument came from a man named Stephen Helfer from the Cambridge Citizens for Smokers’ Rights. The 66-year-old and 45-year smoker relayed his comment to me, stating his concerns about a smoke-free campus.
“This is supposed to be an educational institution, but all they want to do is control [the students]. They’re trying to either force [smokers] to quit smoking, or go off campus and put [themselves] in dangerous positions,” Helfer said.
Helfer said he feels “bullied by power-hungry public health officials, whose salaries I pay for through my cigarette purchases.”
The Great American Smokeout was a monumental first step for the SGA toward combating one of the biggest issues on campus. Moving forward, Amanda Robinson said, “We’re going to focus on the survey and petition. We want to have accurate data to reflect.”
Meanwhile, Lewis says, “We want to get out there more, as there are still a lot of students who don’t know about us. We’re going to start working out the details of our plan, the fine print, and start implementing policies.”
With the groundwork in place, the S.G.A plans to make progress toward a tobacco-free campus next year. Despite strong resistance to come throughout the course of the year, Robinson remains “very confident” that UMass Lowell will join the ranks of the 1,178 campuses nationwide to go tobacco-free.
