ASUO President Amelie Rousseau is pushing for a smoke-free campus and has joined the University’s Smoke Free Task Force to start gathering support.
The task force, a group of mainly University faculty created in the 2007-08 school year, surveyed students, faculty and staff in April 2008 and found support from 75 percent of its 4,769 participants.
“(Rousseau) is the first ASUO president to stand up and publicly support it,” University Health Coordinator Paula Staight said. “She was looking at not only the data, but the public health perspective.”
Other Oregon colleges involved in the discussion include Lane Community College, Mount Hood Community College, Portland State University and Oregon State University. Lane and Mount Hood implemented smoking bans this year.
At Lane, where the campus ban began Sept. 27, Employee Wellness Coordinator Wendy Simmons said implementation was already going extremely well.
“There are great things we’re seeing,” Simmons said. “People are not exposed to second-hand smoke or third-hand smoke, and there are already less cigarette butts in the core of campus.”
Before the full implementation started at LCC, there were smoking shelters similar to covered bus stops. Now there are four major smoking shelters in the parking lots.
Simmons said they began the project three and a half years ago.
“I don’t know if we could even dream of (a smoke-free campus), but with a lot of help from campus and a lot of input … we did it really progressively,” Simmons said.
But students who smoke on campus say a major part of it is the convenience of a cigarette after class.
“After class, it’s really nice to just be able to walk out the door and smoke a cigarette and then walk out to the bus or something,” University freshman Ben Danner said.
Rousseau hopes a cigarette ban on campus would make this habit a chore, which would in turn discourage smokers.
“We want to make it easier for people to live healthy lives,” Rousseau said. “We want UO to be a healthy community, and that starts with being tobacco-free.”
Rousseau said a major component of a potential smoking ban would be preventing second-hand smoke on campus.
“It’s about protecting students and staff from second-hand smoke, because our campus is a workplace, and people do have to travel between buildings and are exposed to second-hand smoke,” she said.
She also referenced the Smoke Free Task Force survey that said 3,576 of 4,769 University respondents, 75 percent, were “occasionally or often bothered by second-hand smoke on campus.”
“Smokers have rights, but non-smokers also have rights,” University Health Center Peer Health Educator Heather Roblin said.
Danner said he already tries to take this view into account.
“Personally, I try to stay away from people when I’m smoking cigarettes, because I understand that people don’t like second-hand smoke,” he said. “So if that’s the problem, then I would say, make an area like (a shelter), and you can stay away from it.”
The idea of making the University a smoke-free campus has been circulating since at least  2007, when then-ASUO President Emily McLain said she would consider creating a committee to discuss a smoke-free campus. In 2009, the Smoke Free Task Force recommended implementing it in the next two years, a proposal the University Senate endorsed. Then-ASUO President Sam Dotters-Katz said that a smoke-free campus might be difficult to enforce, but that creating smoking areas would be a sensible compromise. 
In March 2010, several ASUO senators and former senators participated in a “Smoke-In” to show opposition to the University creating a smoke-free campus.
“I don’t think the administration or the ASUO is any position to tell students what they can and can’t do outside on public property,” former ASUO Sen. Alex McCafferty said at the “Smoke-In.”
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