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MSU-Moorhead bans all smoking, even outdoors

All tobacco use will be banned -- inside and outside -- on the Minnesota State University grounds.

Last update: May 9, 2007 - 11:30 PM

Minnesota State University, Moorhead will be the first four-year public university in Minnesota to ban smoking anywhere on school grounds -- including outdoors.

The policy, which will be announced today and take effect Jan. 1, affects everything from residence halls and staff offices to parking lots and a 300-acre science center near Moorhead. Altogether, 440 campus-owned acres are affected. Use of tobacco products, including chewing tobacco, will be banned.

"We're creating a healthier learning and living and working environment," said Susanne Williams, assistant to the president and chairwoman of the alcohol and college life committee on the 7,000-student campus.

The Moorhead policy is "very unusual" for a large public school, said Dave Golden, director of public health for the University of Minnesota's Boynton Health Services. Golden will attend the ceremony announcing the new policy.

"To have the grounds go totally smoke-free is unusual -- none of the U campuses do that," Golden said. "I don't think there's another [large four-year public college] like this."

Some private colleges, such as Bethel University in Arden Hills, have nonsmoking covenants with students, staff and faculty, but allow visitors to smoke. Many colleges, including the University of Minnesota's Twin Cities campus, have rules prohibiting smoking in buildings but allow smoking outside. The Twin Cities campus allows smoking 25 feet from doors, while Moorhead's current policy allows smoking 20 feet from doors.

"Every spring when the snow melts, you see cigarette butts and it's a mess," Williams said. "That's when people start talking about a new policy."

Moorhead began reexamining its smoking policy as part of a Clay County study of second-hand smoke. Surveys of students and faculty members showed that they recognized the dangers of smoking and that they were more likely to be exposed to second-hand smoke on campus than at home or in restaurants or bars.

"That's because anytime you went out a [campus] building, you were exposed to it," Williams said.

Enforcement will rely on people telling smokers to put away their tobacco, or enlisting the student judicial system or campus security for help, she said.

Among students, 43 percent said they were "very likely" to support going smoke-free, compared with 66 percent of faculty and staff. A survey of prospective students and employees showed that a smoking ban would deter very few from enrolling or working on campus.

Moorhead junior Leigh Wilson-Mattson, president of the student senate, supports the policy out of concern for students with health issues that could be worsened by second-hand smoke. The senate does not have a stance on the issue.

Wilson-Mattson said she encounters second-hand smoke on a daily basis. It was "a big problem" during her freshman year, she said, when she lived in the dorms. The circulation system sucked in cigarette smoke and distributed it as far as her room on the ninth floor, she said.

Alexander Ellsworth, a junior who opposes the policy, said he thinks it'll be impossible to enforce. The university can't enforce the current 20-foot nonsmoking policy, he noted.

He raised concerns that students will smoke on city property and dump cigarette butts on private lawns and that they will spurn the policy and smoke on campus in winter.

The policy's saving grace, he said, is its plan to sponsor programs to help people give up tobacco.

Staff reporter Chao Xiong contributed to this report. Mary Jane Smetanka • 612-673-7380 • smetan@startribune.com