Response to the smoking ban

Amanda Racine
Special to the Critic

That smell stays with you, all the way to your car. It holds onto the clothes you wear, and the little butts stick to the bottoms of your shoes.
Sure, the smoking ban was put into affect near the Res. Halls and near the academic buildings, but what about the parking lots?
For people who live in Stonehenge, it’s a trek up the hill and through the hundreds of cigarette butts spread on the ground.
There are the signs that are up throughout the campus “No Smoking” but what about when Public Safety isn’t around at 3:00 a. m. and there’s a group of people smoking in the courtyard?
There have been many attempts to solve this issue between the smokers and the non-smokers one of them being just to move the gazebo to the parking lot, and make them go there if they need a smoke.
This option to keep smoking to the parking lots only seems to work during the daytime.
“I think that the smoking ban is a good idea,” Polly Schwarz, a sophomore here at LSC, said.
“I think that it would be fair if there was one more place, because kids just sneak around and smoke anywhere because there are so few places they are allowed to be in.”
By moving the smoking gazebo, they have created another problem; trashing the parking lots. There is glass, beer bottles, cans, cigarette butts, fast food bags, and remnants of many different things littering the Stonehenge parking lot.
“The parking lot is full of trash and needs to be repaved badly,” Schwarz said. “I’m terrified of popping a tire on my car. It’s not like the school will pay for a new 100 dollar tire,” Schwarz said.
There isn’t much Lyndon can do about the smoking ban, there will always be smokers on campus. The only thing that Lyndon can do is try to accommodate both parties and everyone in between. To those who park and smoke in the parking lots: can you please clean up after yourself?