They can take our cigarettes but they can never take our freedom

This being the last week of the last block of the year, it feels safe to assume that anyone reading this has been rudely refamiliarized with the agony of the crushing Saturday morning hangover. Likewise, the smokers in the Catalyst’s readership know that very few things are as effective at reassuring those afflicted with Skol-induced migraines of the inherent worth-livingness of life than the deep inhalation of nicotine and carcinogens before, after, and during a greasy breakfast, preferably accompanied by an excess of cheap over-sugared coffee. This knowledge makes the fact that signs have recently appeared banning smoking on the Rastall patios tantamount to a declaration of war on the smoker’s way of life.

I don’t spend that much time in Rastall anymore. The allure of excessively greasy bacon and half-assed omelets doesn’t hold a candle to the breakfasts I can make in my own kitchen. As a result, my own subjective infuriation about this assault on my freedom isn’t the point of this article. I am writing this for the freshmen who will arrive next year, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, only to find their hopes of smoky salvation crushed on their first bleary-eyed Saturday. This is for the sophomores, wallowing in the depths of their slump, who need that little extra kick after class to continue believing college is worth the time, money, and inevitable brain damage. Even the juniors, despite their increased refuge in apartment kitchens and Benji’s lunches outside Worner, deserve to be spoken up for lest this terrible affront go unnoticed.

Now, there are obvious reasons to ban smoking on the patios. They’re the same bullshit reasons that prevent me from smoking in my favorite bars, the same reasons that inspire rage in my roommates every time I consider smoking in my own bed. Smoking is fucking gross. It makes you smell bad, the smoke is cloyingly oppressive, it kills your taste buds, stuffs your nose, and, yeah, causes cancer. And while every smoker knows these things, it doesn’t mean we have the right to inflict our personally self-destructive choice onto the innocent fleshy-pink virgin lungs of our more longevity-minded peers. I’m not actually enough of an egotist to believe that. 

With that concession in mind, however, all I ask is a little bit of consideration for my younger colleagues in cancerous consumption. They already can’t smoke in the dorms; the smoking floor of Loomis was an ashen memory in sophomore mouths at the start of my freshman year, and a single drag of a cigarette is punished as fiercely as puffing away on the devil’s weed if an RA catches a whiff in the hall. No matter how wonderfully the articulation of their arguments in a Philosophy FYE might be emphasized by the addition of a smoky trail behind their wild gesticulations, there’s not a smoking classroom to be found on this campus. And that’s okay. But don’t take away the patios.

There has to be a middle path here, some way to satisfy both the smokers and the namby-pamby tender-lunged whiners who doubtlessly caused this change. The obvious solution, at least in my view, is to segregate the patios. It’s not that hard to put all the nonsmokers off on the sunny-side patio and let the smokers puff away in peace while trying to remember what it feels like to be a human being.

Of course, naysayers will still find fault with this. “What happens,” they will simper, “when the side patio fills up? What if we prefer the raised porch? What are we to do on sunny days?” Honestly, my first impulse is to tell these mewling simpletons to just sack up. Don’t smokers, having already made what I consider to be a generous concession in allowing one patio to stay smoke-free, deserve to have their freedom respected? You don’t complain about the car next to you belching exhaust at a stop light, and there’s surely more carbon monoxide in that than in the trace amounts of nicotine-infused haze we are generous enough to share with you.

Still, there are the health risks, there’s the discomfort, the ruined appetites that the smoke could cause, drifting from the raised patio. And so what? We allow an equally unhealthy, equally damaging “personal choice” to run rampant throughout our campus and our dining halls completely without comment. I speak, of course, of obesity, which has more of an impact on the health of our nation than all the cigarettes consumed at this school. Sure, I might be labeled a fattist, and I should consider the general lack of obesity at this school, but I promise you, the overall loss of appetite I feel at seeing rolls of fat protruding from under a too-tight T-shirt far exceeds whatever squeamishness might arise from a stray wisp of smoke. 

It could be taken even farther. I find certain modes of dress offensive, but I don’t demand they be banned from public spaces simply because I can’t hang. Last time I was in Rastall I saw a man in a vest, dress shirt and tie, wearing his formal attire tucked into baggy sweat pants with flip flops. I was so preoccupied that I found myself unable to look away for half my meal, perplexed that any man could possibly think such a travesty of dress was acceptable. And yet I don’t plead and whine to the administration that people are putting me off my meal because of the choices they made in dressing themselves.

I hate the implication that the choice, the conscious decision that smokers have made, isn’t worth respecting. Every single other individual proclivity is honored at this school, but smoking isn’t. It’s not like smokers don’t understand how terribly stupid this addiction is. We know how to read; we went to health class in high school. We understand that this is a powerfully addictive drug and it will kill us. But for now we are young; let us smoke in the sun and cough our lungs out every morning.

My real fear here is the slippery slope that’s inherent in this new ban. What makes the tables in Rastall sacred as a non-smoking area? If someone complains, will smoking be banned from the tables in front of Worner as well? After all, people eat lunch there too, and it’s just as ventilated as the Rastall patios. What about the tables above the soccer hill, outside the Preserve? And what if the issue extends beyond my assumed complaint of simply preserving eating areas as smoke-free environments? Are the study areas outside the big dorms next? Will they ban smoking in Smoker’s Paradise? Sure, there are ashtrays in all these locations, but there are ashtrays on the Rastall patio as well.

I realize I am being a little harsh about this, but the idea of draconian no-smoking rules dominating the campus is a terrifying future I couldn’t bear to see come to pass. The sublime pleasure of smoking after Rastall brunch is one of the few things I remember positively from my freshman year, and it’s been taken from all future classes at this college. So, please, let us light up with pride. Let us take solace in one of the few things that still seems beautiful in this cold, dark, world. I understand that nonsmokers think they have a valid claim to pure air, but let me lay it on the table. If you can’t handle the smoke, get out of the kitchen, because as far as I am concerned, we have a right to burn.