In response to The Great American Smoke-In tomorrow (noon in the EMU Amphitheater), ASUO President Amélie Rousseau has organized a Smoke-Out. (Is she going to get us high? I don’t think so.) [Emphasis in original.]

Hi all,

A tobacco-free campus is a comin’! We are excited that this campus policy change will soon be announced.

The ASUO and the Clean Air Project are organizing a UO smoke-OUT, this Thursday 12-1 in the EMU amphitheater. The smoke-out is in response to the ‘Coalition of On Campus Smokers’ smoke-in event at the same time. We will meet at 11:45 am by the silver chair in the EMU to distribute signs and t-shirts. Even if you can’t come for the whole time, please come for a bit!

We will be participating in a discussion and passing out information about health effects of tobacco, reminding people that 75% of students believe that the right to breathe clean air should take precedence over the right to smoke.

We are also having a sign-making party at the ASUO office, Wednesday from 4-5 pm, where we will be creating some beautiful, positive messaging! If you are artsy/have neat handwriting, please come!

Best,

Amelie Rousseau
ASUO President
[email protected]
EMU Suite 4

I’m not even going to go into precedence of rights. You guys are smarter than that.

Also, I like that it was us taking action that influenced the ASUO to take action. This is already a victory.

But the most interesting part of all this is Rousseau’s claim that they are going to be “participating in discussion.” FINALLY. The most fascinating part of this smoke-free campus business is that we are the only ones who are talking about it. The Executive has made no effort to engage students in the discussion, and it took an event put on by the Oregon Commentator and the Coalition of On-Campus Smokers (which is barely a real thing) to get them to do anything at all.

So many of the things Rousseau has done this year were shady in some way or another. Why won’t the ASUO be honest and open with the students who elected them? Is it so hard to have an open forum to talk about things? What are they hiding? What are their intentions?

Point being, I’m glad she’s going to have a discussion. It’ll be the first of her administration, and it’s long overdue.

If you’d like to engage in that discussion, please come tomorrow at noon to the EMU Amphitheater. I don’t care if you go to the smoke-out or the smoke-in. It doesn’t really matter. Just force the ASUO to have the conversation.

[Author’s note: To quote a friend, “That’s, like, something Reese Witherspoon’s character would do in Election.”]

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010 at 19:07 by Lyzi Diamond and is filed under ASUO, Campus, Civil Liberties, Smoking Ban, Stupid. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.