Smoke break on Calhoun
With the smoking ban in place, students head to the outskirts of campus for a smoke break
November 4, 2015
Last semester, cigarette smoke trailed through Loyola’s campus, but now, the trail outlines campus property.
The smoking debris has become a nuisance to the surrounding community.
Aidan Eljumaily, smoker and English junior, understands why the community feels this way.
“I get why they don’t want the butts and stuff all around. I guess it just doesn’t really make sense to push it onto where people live. Everybody has to come out here now and people all live on Calhoun,” Eljumaily said.
Smokers now take their breaks on the perimeters of campus, on city sidewalks and streets such as Calhoun Street, St. Charles Avenue, Freret Street, and LaSalle Place. With no smoking receptacles, these streets are suffering from an influx of cigarette debris.
Eljumaily also pointed out that second-hand smoke is being moved towards the children of Holy Name of Jesus School.
“Half the people that smoke just go right next to where the little kiddies are kicking it,” Eljumaily said.
Curry Winborn, non-smoking piano performance senior, said that he has noticed a decrease in students and smoke at former, popular smoking areas since the Aug. 1 ban was implemented.
“At first I hated it, cause I thought, ‘people should be allowed to smoke on campus,’ and then I was here during August and I realized how much nicer the campus smelled,” Winborn said.
The campus may smell nicer, but the air on the outskirts of campus continues to be a haze.
Many neighbors to Loyola’s campus, such as Molly Compagno, IT lab specialist, have complained about the smoke and cigarette butts intruding their front yards.
“Whenever you see the tours on campus, it does look bad to have a patch of smokers, but my concern is the litter. There could be a pole ashtray out near the sidewalk,” Compagno said.
Angela Honora, Loyola University Police Department Lieutenant, said that university maintenance has cleaned up a few areas surrounding campus because of high complaints from residents.
“We are in the process of asking them to monitor dropping their cigarette butts. Take a cup of water with them, a coffee cup or something and drop their butts in there and place them in the trash can,” Honora said.
Loyola, as a whole, will continue to work out the kinks of the new smoking ban policy.
Alexandra Kelch, assistant director of student conduct, said Loyola is facing growing pains with the new smoking ban.
“I think that once it becomes troublesome enough and enough people find out that we are serious about it, hopefully we’ll see our numbers of general tobacco use have decreased. That’s the hope. That’s the goal. That students, faculty and staff will kick the habit,” Kelch said.
Shannon Newland takes a smoke break on Calhoun. Since Loyola went smoke-free on August 1, smokers like Newline have since moved to Calhoun street and other streets near campus. Photo credit: Taylor Galmiche
Shannon newland • Nov 5, 2015 at 5:42 pm
hey will yall take this photo and my name out of this article. I was not informed on the spicifics of why my photo was being taken.