As academics and poseurs alike raise their lighters in revolt against the impending smoking ban, Students for Sensible Drug Policy have drafted an open letter to the Tobacco Workgroup protesting its methodology. The ban proposed by Michael McNeil and the Workgroup would outlaw smoking within Columbia’s property, even extending its reach to the surrounding sidewalks.

Although the Workgroup conducted a survey last spring and held a townhall meeting last week to hear student voices, our smoking scribes prove that Frontiers of Science has some use: they claim that the sample size was too small to indicate true sentiment.

 Full letter after the jump.

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Photo via DemocraticUnderground.com

Bwogger Emily Ahn kept her eyes open through all of this past week’s CCSC meeting.

The second meeting of the year started promptly with the introduction of Bathabile Mthombeni, the Associate Officer of the Ombuds Office.  A little known service, the Ombuds Office, located at 660 Schermerhorn, offers a “confidential, informal, impartial, independent resource for conflict resolution” dealing with internal and interpersonal conflict. This service is outside of the Dean’s Discipline, meaning that everything is actually completely confidential. Mthombeni stressed that no problem considered “too frivolous or too serious” and suggested that the key to conflict resolution is to “articulate needs and interests” without being pushy. Unfortunately, there were no tips on how to reason with the finicky Broadway entrance to Lerner. Read more…

A mild Sunday night meeting started off with some great news: the Bacchanal College Days T-shirts had been universally praised and were in high demand.  In true Columbia form, however, the only leftovers are extra-large.  And speaking of Bacchanal, the Campus Life Committee had originally wanted to have a pre-concert festival was originally planned for Saturday, but were told that it “needed to be silent.”  George Krebs offered no further explanation other than that they had actually been considering a mime show.

The majority of the meeting was spent on familiar topics: meal plans and substance policies.  After last week’s hullaballoo, the upper class meal plan is no longer part of the Ferris Booth proposal.  Those optional meal plans have already been adjusted by increasing the number of meals in most plans and adding “free meals” to each plan. In order to save the struggling venue, however, both sides are still pushing for John Jay-style swipe access.  Breakfast would be priced from $6-7, lunch from $8-9, and dinner from $10-11.  It would be a continuous swipe system (much like the system John Jay will transition to by 2010) and no, the food won’t go down in quality, though portions may be reduced. Curses! Read more…

Now that Columbia’s buildings (and the 25 feet surrounding those buildings) are officially smoke-free, the ashtrays in front of Hamilton — the longtime home of many a clove extinguished in the minutes before a humanities class — have been turned into flower pots.

The War on Tobacco has taken a most poetic turn.

Photo by Joseph Meyers

Bwog just heard word that this July, Governor Paterson signed legislation making smoking illegal in all New York college dormitories — this includes EC! 

A pair of RAs also noted that at least for Columbia, the mere possession of tobacco products is forbidden. 

In other crackdown news, one Bwog staffer was removed by security this morning for eating some delightful breakfast treats in a Lerner computer lounge. The no-eating policy in the computer lounges is nothing new, but now it seems it’s actually being enforced, which is just awful.