Smoking & Studing

A long exam, a speech in front of the class, a conference with your Professor, after any of these situations some students think to themselves, at least the ones that smoke, I really could use a cigarette. They walk outside the building and light one up, totally enjoying the calming sensation. In T. Leigh Maxwell’s essay “A Deadly Education” (168-175), she strongly supports a total smoke free campus at Clayton State University. I am just a part-time student and only on campus a couple of hours; I am finding it hard to agree or disagree with Maxwell, as far as a total ban on campus. I do agree with her concern over secondhand smoke and her expressed anger that non-smokers should give way to the smoker’s right to light up.

Maxwell does not believe having the students smoke outside the building, at least thirty feet away from any entrances, is good enough. Her concerns are with the students that walk through or near by the smoker(s) having to breathe the secondhand smoke. “Every day non-smoking students are expected to attend a poisonous and polluted campus to get their higher education” (170).  Maxwell does give supported medical evidence of how hazardous secondhand smoke can be for any person breathing the “…..putrid clouds of poisonous second hand smoke…..” (168). The health dangers are serious and most people are diagnosed in their later years. Besides lung cancer, some other diseases are breast cancer, sinus cancer, bladder cancer, etc…(170)  just from breathing secondhand smoke. Maxwell does present a strong case for a smoke free campus, until it is the politically correct thing to do it won’t be done.

Maxwell, T. Leigh. “A Deadly Education” Connections: Reading for First-Year Writing. Clayton State    University, 2011. 168-175.