Students will no longer be able to purchase tobacco products at Erb Essentials, the convenience store on the ground floor of the EMU, if the Campus Advisory Board is successful in its new campaign.
The Campus Advisory Board, a group within the University Health Center that works to educate students about smoking, will appear before the EMU Board of Directors and the ASUO Student Senate on Wednesday to ask for help in ending the tobacco sales.
Paula Staight, director of health education at the University Health Center, said she hopes that the EMU Board will recommend a stop to the sales.
“By virtue of selling cigarettes, (the University) says it’s not so bad,” she said. “It’s a bigger issue than the freedom to buy a cigarette.”
The EMU Board will meet at 4 p.m. in the EMU Board Room, and the Senate will meet at 7 p.m. in the same location.
But senior international studies major Carly Weaver thinks Erb Essentials should be allowed to sell tobacco on campus, even though she doesn’t buy it there herself..
“Campus prices are exuberantly high,” Weaver said, adding that high prices encourage her to buy cigarettes off campus and save money. She has, however, enjoyed the ability to buy cigarettes in Erb Essentials with her campus cash over the last couple of years, she said.
According to EMU Board member Julian Pscheid, the Board can only make a recommendation to EMU Director Dusty Miller to have Erb Essentials discontinue tobacco sales.
A CAB report given to the EMU Board and the Senate prior to the meeting states that the University has fallen short in its commitment to “community well-being” by selling tobacco.
“Selling tobacco on campus normalizes the behavior and indicates that the University sanctions smoking and/or chewing, which contradicts messages about the dangers of its use,” the report states.
Junior political science major Rebekah Lebwohl, a former Peer Health Educator, said that the University is the only school in the Pacific-10 Conference to profit from tobacco sales on campus.
“It’s an embarrassment,” Lebwohl said. “We hope to get tobacco sales off campus. We feel it goes against the mission of the University and the EMU.”
The EMU Board has voted against the recommendation in the past, but Lebwohl hopes this time will be different because more student activists are involved in the push to end tobacco sales on campus.
Lebwohl added that it isn’t just an issue of smokers’ rights on campus but also a question of the rights of non-smokers to breathe healthy air.
According to Staight, CAB is not currently working to ban smoking on campus, but she said that there are several models available for smoke-free campuses. She said that they are currently working, however, to expand the “10-foot rule” so that people must be more than 10 feet away from a building before smoking.
Staight added that the University Health Center currently has a grant to provide nicotine patches and gum to students to help them quit smoking.
Since the beginning of the service in fall 2003, 345 students have been provided with nicotine products, Lebwohl said.
Lebwohl encourages any student who wants Erb Essentials to discontinue tobacco sales to attend the Wednesday meeting and possibly even testify for the recommendation.