To the Editor:
I was a smoker for 15 years or so. That was long enough.

Since I have no interest in ever being addicted to nicotine again, I give people who are smoking a wide berth, even when I encounter them out of doors.

So, dear smoker, perhaps you can understand my irritation at the sight of your lit cigarette mere feet away from the door to the building in which I work on campus.
Sure, I could just enter my workplace through a different door.

But I don’t know why I should be inconvenienced, since according to the college’s smoking and tobacco use policy, “Smoking on college grounds is allowed as long as such use is not within close proximity (defined as within 20 feet) of any facility entrance.”

So if you’re wondering why the Student Senate is considering a ban of smoking on campus, perhaps it is because you, and others like you, are so inconsiderate that the current policy isn’t protecting non-smokers from your noxious, carcinogenic second-hand smoke.

We non-smokers merely desire that our health not be unnecessarily endangered. If you respect that desire and act accordingly, then perhaps all of this talk about a smoke-free campus will just go away. It couldn’t hurt.

Rodney W. Cupp
Associate Professor
Department of Language and Literature
Wayne State College
1111 Main St.
Wayne, NE 68787
(402) 375-7472