Even though we are a tobacco free campus, smoke continues to fill the sidewalks, quad and various places on campus.

While we understand that not every person can be reprimanded, shouldn’t there at least be some?

Everyday, a faculty member, staff member, student or someone on campus nonchalantly walks outside and smokes a cigarette. Some even smoke on the sidewalks walking to their next class, blowing the smoke onto students walking the other way.

When the policy was first put into place, there were only a few faculty, staff and students who hid behind a bush or trash can to smoke on campus. However, now that people are not seeing regular consequences, more and more students, faculty and staff are smoking out in the open.

Five students recently sat in front of Ellender Hall on a blanket smoking. A teacher frequently sits in the wooded patio area in the middle of Peltier Hall to take a smoke break between classes. Some students smoke while riding their bike and many simply walk to class or sit on the wood outside of the Student Union to light up.

There has not been a time when we have seen a faculty member, staff or student receive consequences for breaking the policy.

Even the upcoming speech forum topic is about whether the University should enforce the smoking policy or not.  It does not ask for student opinions on the effectiveness of the policy. It asks if it should be enforced. If no one planned to enforce it, then why bother to put it in writing?

Instead of worrying about cars parked the wrong way or being too close to the line or dumpster, University Police and other University officials in charge of putting the consequences in order should start doing their jobs.

Either enforce the current policy or change back to an open tobacco policy. Otherwise, the students are just getting confused. Sooner or later, people will see that the University fails at leading its students. It can’t even enforce its own rules.

When students see that their own faculty and staff don’t follow the rules, how can they be expected to care?

The only ones who seem to enforce the policy within their own departments are the Nicholls administrators in the front office buildings on campus.

Everywhere else, Nicholls faculty laugh with students as they join them for a smoke.

So what’s the next step? Do we crack down on smoking or let people do as they will?

Obviously, administration is not going to let up completely, because that would prove to students and faculty that they are in charge. But like many have said before, a compromise will be easy to reach if they simply designate areas.

Until then, the policy states that there is no tobacco use on campus. Why is no one enforcing what we’ve spent so much time putting down in writing?