This past April, the university began considering making the Columbia campus an entirely smoke-free campus. Columbia held several public forums to gauge student opinion. Current smoking policy prohibits smoking inside all university buildings as well as in areas within 20 to 50 feet of building entrances. Student opinion on expanding this ban across the entire campus is mixed.

"It doesn’t bother me that people smoke on campus and actually it is nice to see people gathering together and having conversations."

"The thing I don’t like about smoking on campus is that with second hand smoke you don’t have the filters. Smokers, they got … have nice filters when they smoke so all the really bad stuff that gets out of cigarettes but second hand smoking is worse than actually smoking. So I think that campus should have smoking areas that are really far away from buildings."

However, some students find that giving up the social aspects of smoking will be difficult.

"It’s one of the unfortunately, like, great things about cigarettes is that people, now that people can’t smoke inside, they’ll stop and have a conversation with somebody. It’s just unfortunate that it has to happen around that and I wonder what the campus could sort of do to create other spaces where people can stop and talk to each other that they don’t know."

Despite complaints that the current policy is not sufficiently enforced, campus residents may receive the smoking ban more favorably.

"I think it would make people feel a bit more uncomfortable by doing something that’s against the rules."

A decision regarding the smoking ban is expected later this year, but for now the University Senate continues to work on its recommendation to the central administration.