The Staff Council voted June 29 in favor of a smoke-free campus after months of preparation and surveys.
Now that the three main governing bodies of the University have voted in favor of a smoke-free campus, the final smoking policy remains in the hands of President Gogue and a task force.
"We were charged with letting the faculty voice their opinions," said Nakeisha Janigan, chair of Staff Council.
Janigan said to get the staff's opinions, the Council sent out a survey. The survey asked five questions pertaining to having a smoke-free campus and received around a 50 percent response.
"Sixty-three percent of campus was positive, 2 percent didn't care and the remaining was negative or very negative," said Michael Freeman, risk management and safety and Staff Council member who was put in charge of heading the topic for the Staff Council.
Freeman also gave staff a chance to leave comments on the survey and said he received 193 responses ranging from comical to extremely angry. More than any other comments were those expressing a desire to have designated areas around campus.
After giving his findings from the survey, Freeman presented the results to the Staff Council, and then they voted. Voting resulted in 60 percent of the representatives in favor of a smoking ban.
Freeman said the vote signifies the staff's push for a smoke-free campus and that the Council did a really good job of representing the wishes of the majority of University staff members.
"We have people who smoke who voted for the ban," Freeman said.
Many put their views aside and voted based on what they knew the majority wanted, Freeman said.
After last Wednesday's vote from the Council, Janigan said the results will go to the president's office and a task force will be created to begin writing a policy.
"All of the feedback from the groups on campus will go back to the president, and he makes the final decision," said Eric Smith, director of health promotion and wellness initiative.
Smith said it has been the president's belief that the University must make a decision after everyone's opinion has been heard.
For the next couple months, the task force in charge of finding the best way to bring a smoking ban to campus will use the opinions from the three voting bodies and try to make a policy for students and staff to ease into.
Freeman said he believes a succession program should also be put into place for smokers on campus to make the changes smoother.
He recommends having designated areas on campus with advertisements for ways to quit smoking.
The task force has approximately seven months to find the best thing to do.
Smith said he assumes the next steps will go very quickly, but he said a lot has to be done within the next year to get the word out. The expected date for the ban to go into effect is Aug. 1, 2012.
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