Smokers
Break Personal Space
To
the Editors:
The fart stench enters your nasal passages right as you’re
stepping onto the elevator. Too late to escape, you are now committed
to sharing the guilty person’s post-lunchtime digestive experience
in all its nauseating glory. You have no alternative except to take
tiny breaths through your mouth and wait until you can burst through
the doors at the earliest possible opportunity. You vow that next
time, you’ll take the stairs. Let us now address the predicament
of a non-smoker entering or exiting the Con, the library, the mailroom,
King, Dascomb, and Stevenson (these are limited to what I have personally
experienced, although I’m certain the trend continues elsewhere).
It is perfectly fair to say that the majority of the time, excluding
uncommon hours of the day, it is virtually impossible for said non-smoker
to avoid walking through a cloud of that which May be Hazardous
to one’s Health. Like a fart in an elevator, second-hand smoke
is offensive AND unavoidable.
Now before you write a rebuttal that thoroughly refutes the assertion
that cigarette smoke is like flatulence, let it be clear that I
am well aware that I am comparing apples to oranges. In fact, very
little research shows farting (or second-hand farts) to be significantly
harmful to one’s health. Additionally, being that breaking
wind is arguably uncontrollable, or at least a natural bodily function,
there is much more justification for engaging in this potentially
annoying activity in public. So I apologize for the exaggeration
hope that clears the air. At any rate, having to walk through a
hazy blue fog just to get to the fresh air (or to a class) is not
only ironic, but highly obnoxious, especially if one is dealing
with asthma, or a bronchial infection (or, simply doesn’t LIKE
inhaling other people’s smoky CO2). The assumption that one
can avoid second-hand smoke if he or she puts his or her respective
mind to it just isn’t true. Believe me, I would if I could.
But I simply can’t in every circumstance, particularly when
the areas surrounding popular entrances and exits are as frequented
as they often are by members of the smoking population of Oberlin.
I don’t want to come off like I have a problem with smokers
as people. I know that I am addressing many good, moral, and decent
people personally with these remarks simply because they choose
to smoke. However, under the circumstances, I feel it is necessary
to reinstate this very important truism: smoking is NOT strictly
a personal activity. It affects everybody in the vicinity, and is
often offensive to non-smokers (not to mention harmful to everybody
involved over a long period of time). And quite frankly, I really
don’t care what people do to their own bodies, provided it
doesn’t infringe on anybody else’s rights. Yet, in the
same way that it is wrong to dump toxic waste on your neighbor’s
lawn, and undesirable, at the very least, to break wind in a crowded
elevator, smoking in unavoidable places is an inconsiderate imposition
on people who would rather not relinquish their right to breathe
freely. Which is why I’m asking for a little consideration
on behalf of the non-smokers: please don’t create a chemically
unsafe environment right outside the doors of everyone’s public
facilities and residence halls. Give us a little breathing room,
and we promise to be on our best behavior next time we meet you
in the elevator.
–Tom
Hoberg
Conservatory first-year
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