LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Students react to smoking policy perspective
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Editor’s Note: The Oakland Post received a lot of response from last week’s guest perspective from professor Fritz McDonald on the campus smoking policy. The following letters are just a
portion of what we received.
We students at OU know that smoking is harmful, but dealing with people like Fritz McDonald is also dangerous.
Aristotle said that human beings are a rational thinking animal.
What Fritz did was very irrational, rude and threatening. It is also a logical fallacy to raise your voice and ridicule your opponent in an argument in philosophy.
We smokers are not here to cause danger to other students.
Statistically, the pollution from your car is worse than if every smoker got together and smoked at the same time.
Anyway, I was very discouraged when finding out that Fritz was a philosophy professor. For to me and many others, philosophy is not just a subject, it’s not just a job, it is a lifestyle. Philosophy in direct translation form Greek means” love of wisdom.”
The way Fritz went about his argument was childish, unprofessional, threatening and not philosophical in anyway.
Fritz is not just a poor philosopher, but a poor role model and a poor adult.
I dreadfully will regret the day I have to deal with that “philosopher” again, but I keep my mind open to great Philosophy professors like Paul Graves and Eric Larock.
I beg every OU student to not take Fritz as a role model of philosophy for he is the exact opposite of what philosophers are.
— Dominick Borowicz,
Philosophy
I know that OU is on its way to a complete ban on smoking and there appears to be no way to stop it. It seems like an effort to appear as though they are doing something when in reality it is nothing more than posturing.
No one is at risk for cancer from incidental exposure to second hand smoke. Fritz McDonald’s column in the most recent Oakland Post failed to address any of my points from a letter on the subject in a previous issue.
Calling OU’s current policy a, “third-rate Detroit casino style policy” is laughable at best and meant only to be inflammatory.
Likening smokers to a deranged student poisoning the drinking water makes no sense at all. Is he saying all smokers are deranged?
When he says that banning smoking would help save everyone their hard earned dollars, I don’t understand how he can even make that statement.
His hackneyed rhetoric is beneath someone of his position and stature.
—Corey Williams,
Sociology and Anthropology
My name is Jason Poupard, and I am an addict.
I am addicted to nicotine and caffeine to the tune of a pot of coffee (or more) and smoke half-a-pack of cigarettes per day.
I know that smoking will shorten my lifespan and will possibly lead to a particularly nasty death. I accept this. I knew it when I was fourteen and started smoking.
The editorial in the Oct. 26 issue of The Oakland Post made several points that I would like to respond to, as a member of the smoking community.
First, the professor argued that OU ought to ban smoking because of the negative health effects of second-hand smoke.
His definition of second-hand smoke includes walking by a group of people smoking outdoors. Prohibition on other self-destructive habits has proven not only ineffective, but counterproductive.
Perhaps the increased taxes are working —$3 per pack in state and federal tax, which is about half of the total price — only a hair over 20 percent of Americans still smoke.
Tobacco use, however, is no longer America’s leading cause of preventable death.
More than 30 percent of Michiganders are obese. When reformers suggest taxes or bans upon unhealthy food (which is readily available in every building on campus) or nutrition-free sodas, they are actively ignored.
Finally, the professor argued that OU should ban smoking on campus because of increased health care costs.
How can a habit which will lead to my early death from inflicting massive damage upon myself actually cost the system more?
Second, it is a wrong assumption. Less people than ever before are smoking and health care costs are still rising.
On the other hand, a ban on smoking would also cost the school money.
I chose to not attend Wayne State or the University of Michigan precisely for those smoking bans.
Had a full ban existed, I would not have chosen OU. If a full ban is enacted, I will take my money and walk.
Smoking isn’t just pleasant for me. It is also actively unpleasant for others.
For that reason, I support the policy that smokers should not smoke directly in front of the main building entrances.
—Jason Poupard
History
Recently, a member of our faculty claimed that the smoking ban was too lenient.
In doing so, he argued that allowing anyone to smoke on campus was comparable to letting someone poison the water supply.
I would like you to imagine, for a moment, that we allowed someone to bring a large machine to campus to blow toxic chemicals into the air, chemicals that are terrible for people now, and over the long term will end up making the planet uninhabitable. Such a terrible thing is not only allowed, it is for many necessary — it is called a car.
The thousands of cars in the parking lots around campus pose a short and long term health risk more so than any secondhand smoke that a member of our community might encounter. Clearly then, we should ban cuts on campus.
But why stop there? Perhaps we should ban products that are manufactured using fossil fuels, or have a positive carbon footprint, or are made by workers in inhumane conditions.
Perhaps we should require all students, faculty and staff to use renewable energy sources at home, so that we don’t have to worry about the emissions from the power plant negatively impacting our health and environment.
Maybe we should ban non-recycled paper on campus and high fat or high sugar foods, so that we don’t have to pay for the long term care of the problems that obesity causes.
Perhaps we should allow beer and wine on campus, because of the health benefits of moderate consumption.
Or perhaps this professor is complaining because he doesn’t like the smell of smoke. I don’t like the smell of car exhaust. Deal with it.
—Alexander Wiggins,
Applied Mathematics
