Designated smoking on campus

Smokers can expect covered, designated smoking areas to go up on every campus. This decision was reached by the Administrative Service Council (ASC) after a two-year debate.

In the spring of 2009, the college had voted to work toward making ACC completely smoke free by August of 2011. That language has been removed in the new administrative rule on smoking that President Kinslow passed over the summer.

According to Ben Ferrell, the executive vice president of finance and administration, the original vote to make the college smoke free didn't pass by a large majority, and the logistics of a totally smoke free college create a lot of complications.

"This is the compromise between having no policy and being completely smoke free, which is no smoking anywhere on any campus...It's about our employees as well as students, and they are not pariahs. Besides, if you're somewhere like the Service Center, what are you supposed to do? Go stand in the road," said Ferrell.

There is some concern that having only one smoking area on campus will be a problem as well.

"There are a lot of smokers on campus, and if they take away some of the areas to smoke in, it will be too crowded," said Bryan Williams, a student at Rio Grande.

Some campuses have designated smoking areas already. The new Round Rock Campus had them when it opened.

Over the summer, President Kinslow signed into effect the Smoke Free Environment Administrative Rule and associated Procedures and Guidelines, which no longer included to sentence about becoming smoke free by 2011.

"There are no longer any plans for the college to become smoke free. These covered smoking areas are the solution," said Ferrell.

The rule states that all ACC facilities will provide designated smoking and no-smoking areas. These areas will be decided on by the campus managers with input gathered from employees and students.

The Campus Facilities Operations Committee has formed a sub-committee that will be responsible for implementing this administrative rule.

Meetings were held last month to gather input from employees and students on the locations of the designated smoking areas.

According to Rebecca Cole, the environmental health safety and insurance executive director, and member of the sub-committee, the information on recommended designated smoking areas gathered at these meetings will be compiled by the end of the week of Dec. 10.

The next step will be submitting that information to the Facilities and Construction department. There will then be a district-wide project to install designated smoking structures, campus signage and urns.

The timeline for this project has not yet been established.

Once the smoking areas are set up, it will be the campus manager's responsibility to enforce the rule. This presents its own set of challenges, because campus police can't ticket someone for breaking an administrative rule.

"No formal policy on enforcement has been nailed down. We want to put up the locations and then see what enforcement is really needed," said Ferrell.

"The campus police will remind smokers of the rule and where they need to be," said Media Relations Coordinator Alexis Patterson. "We've never needed anything else than that. People have always complied."