Clark College smoking ban
From Free Talk Live
Clark College in Vancouver, Washington has enacted a total ban on smoking and chewing tobacco. Current Washington state law and the previous Clark College policy does not allow for smoking with in 25 feet of building air vents or doors; the college has taken this to a whole new level and will not allow smoking anywhere, not even in the parking lot. Punishment for smoking on the campus includes fines of an unknown amount. Triddle, a student at the college, has made it his personal goal to destroy this ban or at least subvert it as much as is humanly possible. His current plan is to smoke around the campus at will and tell security to go piss up a rope.
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Facts of the case
This matter marks the first investigative journalism article for the Keene Free Press from Triddle; acting as an official reporter he has begun digging into the fascist policies the school has decided to enact. So far some interesting facts have been established:
- Clark College sits on public land.
- The total ban of smoking may have no legal basis at all.
- Campus security may not detain or touch students outside of the realm of standard citizens arrest laws.
- When asked hard questions the Director of Communications and Marketing for the school resorts to vilification.
- The Vancouver city attorney's office are total pussies.
Analysis
The current analysis of the situation is that the ban is, in effect, unenforceable for the student population. In order to levy a fine the school must identify the student to punish. Since security has no authority to detain a student, this will only be possible with the students cooperation. When the security guard requests personal information to issue the citation the supposed smoking terrorist could simply walk away. This would deny the school the ability to positively identify the individual and subvert their ability to issue a citation.
In addition, the ban may in fact be illegal itself, as it denies the rights of smokers on public land; by all accounts smoking with in state and city laws is a right that anyone may enjoy. Just because Clark College sits on public land does not inherently give them permission to regulate the same. Thus far the city's attorney's office has refused to comment on this matter, citing that the only way to get an answer is to seek consultation from an attorney.
Open questions
There are currently a number of open questions that the school has yet to answer. These are:
- Where does the authority to fine a person for smoking come from? Does it apply only to students and faculty?
- Is there a state statue or city ordinance that makes smoking at Clark College a crime?
- What happens if a person refuses to pay the fine?
- How is Clark College going to handle the case of people who are not faculty or students if they decide to smoke on the campus?
- What does Clark College recommend smokers do to maintain their addiction when they have a very short break between classes and do not have enough time to physically leave the property to smoke and make it to their next class?
- Is it fair to make this change in the middle of a school year when smokers had no idea the change would be coming and are now locked into the campus through their investment of time and money?
- Were the people who made the decision to ban smoking at the campus aware that the epidemology study by the EPA and the WHO for cancer risk involved with second hand smoke found no statistically significant increase in actual cancer risk when exposed to second hand smoke, even in workplace settings?
When the question regarding fairness of this issue was asked the Director of Communications and Marketing responded by asking if the questioner was in fact working for the tobacco industry. Triddle assured her that he was not and was in fact merely asking objective questions.
