The Office of Residential life is considering making Dartmouth residence halls completely smoke-free, but said it would not apply the same regulations to College-owned Greek houses.
A steady increase and constantly high proportion of first-year students choosing non-smoking residence options prompted ORL to look again at the matter, according to Dean of Residential Life Martin Redman.
The past three years of freshman housing surveys have shown 87 to 89 percent of freshmen choosing smoke-free housing, Redman said. Only 20 students identified themselves as smokers in the class of 2007.
A national trend in the last ten or fifteen years toward college dormitories being designated smoke-free is cause to create more such spaces at Dartmouth, Redman said. The college's residence halls are already over two-thirds smoke-free.
"A majority of the colleges that offer housing have gone smoke-free," Redman said. "There are not many places you can go these days and smoke inside."
Giving another example for reasons to add more smoke-free options, Redman noted that if there are around 3,000 students want college housing in a given term, and almost 90 percent want smoke-free dorms, there would not be enough beds.
That's the data that has led ORL to the discussions.
Right now they face three options: keep things as they are, add more designated smoke-free residence halls or require that all residence halls be smoke free. Any of the three is possible, Redman said.
ORL has already discussed these issues with the Palaeopitus Senior Society. According to Redman, some of the senior members thought that all buildings were already smoke-free, which is incorrect.
Having been contacted by ORL, the Student Assembly is in the process of forming a committee to provide student input on the issue. Redman hopes the committee's feedback will help ORL decide which direction to go.
"We're going to consider starting a group within the next week," Julia Hildreth '05 told The Dartmouth.
ORL has no plans to make any college-owned Greek houses smoke-free, having decided to adopt a policy of no-interference.
"We certainly would encourage them to come up with reasonable policies to deal with residents who live in their buildings," Redman said.
Furthermore, Redman said this gives the Greek organizations the opportunity to make decisions themselves.
Finally, ORL felt it would be unfair to decide how to regulate college-owned houses, as compared to private ones.
"This is not an issue that I would force on the privately owned organizations, although I suppose we could as a condition of recognition," Redman said. "If I do not do it there, it seems only fair not to impose it upon organizations in buildings that we own."
