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Leave your hookah at home. At least that's the message Austin Community College sent student Xander Brown and his friends, who were smoking from one at the college's Northridge Campus.
After clearing the issue with the campus' police and manager, Brown said he was told in an e-mail from an administrator not to bring the hookah back because it resembled drug paraphernalia. But Brown claims that there is no text in college policy that explicitly prohibits the use of hookahs on campus, "because it is categorized as a pipe." He has collected 200 signatures from ACC students in hopes of forcing the college to address the issue.
The confusion over the school's policy on hookahs doesn't end with the students, as even some administrators are unsure of how to answer the question of whether or not one can be smoked on-campus.
"What we did was forward it to campus police," said Belvolyn Smith, Northridge campus manager, "I just followed their lead."
Campus police, too, were uncertain as to what the policy regarding hookahs is, but were very clear in stating that it was a common sense scenario: if anything looks suspicious, they're going to take a look at it.
ACC student Gracie Winn thinks some students might get the wrong impression.
"It looks automatically like a bong," she said. "I think it would give, especially younger kids, the wrong idea."
Hookahs have already been banned from some college campuses around the nation, including Baylor University in Waco, Texas which prohibits the smoking device in the student handbook. There is no policy in place at the University of Texas at Austin or Texas State in San Marcos, according to officials.
The hookah, which originated in India and is used widely in the Middle East, has become an increasingly popular smoking method among college-aged students in the United States.
PipesPlus hookah bar, which opened across the street from the UT about five years ago, is one of many businesses nationwide benefiting from this growing trend.
Employee Erin Dryden, who stays busy filling and lighting bowls for her customers, said almost all of the bar's patrons are college students.
"We're right across from the university," she said with a cigarette dangling from her lips. "It's a cool hangout."
Dryden said students come to socialize, relax, and, yes, even come to study.
Brent Fogerty, a senior advertising major at UT, said that though he doesn't come into the bar very frequently, "it's an enjoyable experience for about an hour."
While the popularity of hookah bars is on the rise among college-aged students, there is what some researchers have called a dangerous misconception about hookahs and health. A study published in the October issue of Nicotine & Tobacco Research stated research indicated, "that daily use of waterpipes produces nicotine absorption of a magnitude similar to that produced by daily cigarette use."
Dryden, who was quick to admit hookah use wasn't exactly a healthy habit, still described it as being quite different from its much-maligned counterpart.
"In the tobacco use in hookahs," she said, "there's only 0.5 percent nicotine and zero percent tar, so it's nothing compared to a cigarette at all. When you smoke a hookah … it really doesn't feel like you're smoking. It doesn't taste like tobacco."
Many users believe that because the hookah uses water-filtration, it's a safer practice. But a report issued by the World Health Organization in 2005 concluded that even after passing through water, "the smoke produced by a waterpipe contains high levels of toxic compounds, including carbon monoxide, heavy metals and cancer-causing chemicals."
Research also found that, "a typical one-hour long smoking session involves inhaling 100-200 times the volume of smoke inhaled with a single cigarette."
Despite the health risks, because hookah smoking is so often compared to cigarette smoking, Brown wants the college to afford he and his friends the same rights it does to cigarette smokers, 15 feet from the entrance.
Student Life Coordinator Shelley Bowers said Brown has every right to protest. "Students have a right to their own opinion," she said. "It is a public institution."
Upon submitting his petition to the college, Brown hopes that ACC will give him at the very least, a definitive answer.
In a statement common among hookah smokers, Brown said, "It's about the social activity more than it is about smoking."
With what seems to be severe apprehension to address the issue among the college administration, it might be they who end up blowing smoke.
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