A group of students and staff members on the Nicholls campus are attempting to designate smoking areas on campus aside from the 25 feet buildings. There is currently a proposal containing signatures of students who would like to see designated areas on campus.
Angie Pitre is the wellness education coordinator at University Health Services and the SEALS coordinator at Nicholls. She is playing a role in the areas’ designation.
Pitre said the goal is to offer people a “healthy choice.”
Pitre will also be sending an e-mail to allow interested students to sign the proposal electronically.
She gave some information about the project and why she is active in it.
“Being the wellness educator and being in charge of the Tobacco Free Living grant, it’s kind of a gimme that I would be the alcohol and other drug coalition chairman on campus,” Pitre says. “In 2006, the social concerns committee took on as their personal mission to have a smoking policy on campus.”
Nicholls received a grant from the Louisiana Campaign for Tobacco Free Living, which played a role in some of the actions taken by University Health Services.
“The first thing we started with that grant was offering people smoking cessation classes, doing some smoke-free events, creating some awareness so that we could kind of get a feel where people were,” Pitre says.
In addition to helping students stop smoking, the center is also active in trying to get new smoking areas on campus.
The center offers a sort of neutral approach to helping both sides of the issue.
Pitre gave some information students shared with her at an information table recently set up in the Bollinger Memorial Student Union lobby.
“We set up a table in the Union and 89 students stopped by and signed saying yes, they’d love to see designated smoking areas,” Pitre says. “I took a walk around campus with a smoker so I could get that person to tell me where they would go and where would make sense.”
A survey taken at Nicholls in 2007, in which 656 students participated, about 16 percent of participants reported using tobacco every day.
“I don’t think we have a high percentage,” Pitre says, “I just think we see them because they have to be outside to smoke.”
Pitre also hopes to form a Blackboard group which will assist students interested in quitting smoking by providing them with help lines and class options.
“If students want to quit smoking, they can definitely come by (University Health Services) and we’ll help them put a class together,” Pitre says.
She and those helping the cause have a clear idea of what they hope to achieve and what they don’t want to happen.
“Our biggest fight here is just trying to get people not to be apathetic and get involved,” Pitre says. “A step backward would be to not have the administration respond. We’re hoping to have favorable response.
