They are often spotted lounging outside Powell Library or
lurking around the entrances of lecture halls.
Since smoking is not allowed inside any campus building,
including dorms, student smokers assemble to finish their
cigarettes outside before entering buildings.
Albert Kim, a fourth-year psychology student, knows the
consequences of getting caught smoking inside the dorms.
“I was smoking in the stairways (in Dykstra), and my RA
walked by, so I got written up,” Kim said. “I had to
start making posters about not smoking in the halls, and I had to
put them up on every floor.”
Students can only smoke in designated areas around the
residential halls due to a UCLA housing policy that bans smoking
within 20 feet of dorms.
The only on-campus housing that allows smoking is the individual
suites of Saxon and Hitch, and all suitemates must consent to the
smoking.
Despite such apparent herding of smokers, smoking doesn’t
make third-year political student Dominic Garcia feel isolated.
“You usually find a little group hiding around a
corner,” he said. “You just make friends with them
because they’re all smokers.”
Jaime Broberg, a third-year political science student, said
there are times she does feel isolated.
“Sometimes you’re ostracized in class, because
(other students) don’t want to sit next to a smoker,”
she said.
But Broberg said smokers get undue stigma.
“What I don’t get is when I’m outside smoking
or walking around and somebody gives me a dirty look for
smoking,” she said. “That’s annoying because
I’m not in their space, they’re coming to my
space.”
“I don’t go and stand right next to somebody and
blow cigarette smoke in their face,” she added.
But some non-smokers like first-year international studies
student Sarah Wagner would like to see the 20-feet rule apply to
academic buildings on campus as well.
“It would be nice to have, because then we wouldn’t
have to worry about standing in someone else’s air and
breathing in all their fumes,” Wagner said.
Since tobacco products aren’t sold on campus, smokers
purchase cigarettes at various places around Westwood like liquor
stores and gas stations.
Garcia said cigarettes should be sold in Ackerman Union,
especially in light of the fact that the university is considering
incorporating a pub on campus.
“It’s a contradiction, it’s
hypocritical,” he said. “What’s more dangerous,
students that are smoking or students that are drinking?”
The Associated Students of UCLA didn’t always have a ban
on cigarettes.
According to Keith Schoen, ASUCLA retail director, cigarettes
were sold in ASUCLA facilities until the early 1990s, when the
board of directors decided to discontinue the the sale of tobacco
products.
“The board looked at the dangers of smoking and felt they
couldn’t support the sale of a product like
cigarettes,” said Jerry Mann, director of the Student Union
and Student Support Services.
But the Society of Engineering and Applied Sciences Cafe in
Boelter Hall, which was not part of ASUCLA, continued to
carry cigarettes.
SEAS Cafe became the only place on campus for students to buy
cigarettes until spring of 2000 when the cafe discontinued the sale
of cigarettes as well.
But Mann said he believes with enough input, the board
may reconsider their decision.
“There would have been some movement in the 1980s to
convince the board not to sell cigarettes,” Mann said.
“But since we’re talking about a legal product, someone
could just as easily approach the board and make a campaign to
have ASUCLA sell cigarettes.”
In the end, smokers like Garcia want to quit smoking, but they
say it’s hard to do so.
“(Smoking) is very difficult to fight,” Garcia said.
“If you’re on a diet, and all your friends are eating
Cheetos, you’re going to stat chewing on those
Cheetos.”