Reframing the smoking debate
For the two months that I’ve been at Columbia, the debate around smoking on campus has been almost ceaseless. The issue has been discussed time and again at the University Senate town halls as students have argued whether we should maintain the current 20-foot ban or enlarge this ban to cover all of campus. On one extreme we have chain-smokers, and on the other, health nuts—but most of us fall somewhere in the middle. The student body is majorly ambivalent: 50 percent of students say this isn’t even an issue for the University.
Personally, I don’t care what happens, and I smoke. But maybe we need to reframe the argument in order to get somewhere with this debate. We have some serious questions to pose in looking toward the future of this campus. For example, what sort of university do we want to be? Whenever I think about what sort of person I want to be, I ask myself: “What would Don Draper do?“
And Columbia should be asking itself the same question. So why are we even discussing a smoking ban? Let’s roll back the tide of these creeping restrictions on our basic liberties and live our lives as they were meant to be: under a thick, blue haze of cigarette smoke. Imagine the advantages of studying in Butler with a Marlboro dangling from your lip a la Humphrey Bogart! Consider taking one of your mid-terms with a pack of Lucky Strikes on your desk like the men of Sterling Cooper!
Ayn Rand always attached a Promethean significance to the act of smoking—and we all know how popular Ayn Rand is these days. This famous Objectivist and champion of the Right once theorized that attributing lung cancer to cigarette smoking was a merely socialist conspiracy. (Just ignore the fact that she underwent surgery for lung cancer and died shortly afterwards. As Reagan said, facts are stubborn things.)
Who is John Galt? We should instead be asking: Who is Philip Morris? So let us move forward, fellow Columbians! Go buy yourself a pack. You deserve it.
William Holt is a Spectrum opinion blogger. He orders off McDonald’s secret menu.
this is a thoroughly worthless and poorly written post.
I appreciate your decision to express your opinion on Columbia’s ongoing smoking policy debate, but you unfortunately used a survey that only addresses the feelings of General Studies students to justify your claims that Columbia is on a whole ambivalent about the issue. GS is obviously an important facet of the Columbia community, but they certainly do not represent, nor would ever claim, to represent anywhere close to the majority. I’m not sure what the policy is for retractions, and I don’t feel it’s my place to make any suggestions to a news source (as I, and the US, have long felt that media derives a large part of their effectiveness from remaining impartial and independent of outside authority) but using a study that samples a minority of the Columbia community to provide evidence of your ideological alignment with the majority of Columbians only undermines your argument.
I do believe that you are not alone in your sentiments, but I feel as though reviewing and engaging with final workgroup report, which includes a much more comprehensive survey of the Columbia campus, albeit circa 2009, will greatly improve the integrity of your commentary: http://bit.ly/uJkIRM.
Apparently the irony of the post did not properly register, and so I apologize for any misunderstanding.
The second Don Draper is mentioned, of course the irony becomes obvious (Ayn Rand and all of the superfluous exclamation points and question marks certainly emphasize this as well). But the issue is that you frame your flight of fancy and ridiculousness with a seemingly cogent set of statements. Everything you mentioned before WWDDD, save for citing a completely incorrect GSSC source, is either patently true or could very well be the truth: the debate has been ceaseless, there are extremes, but for the most part people reside somewhere in the ambivalent middle etc. By citing a incomprehensive survey in a section that is otherwise a direct statement of facts about the general sentiments of the students at Columbia, you undermine your ability to mock the intensity of the debate and your own attempts at irony fall short. The comical nature of the whole ordeal is that Don Draper and Ayn Rand can address this, even if one takes them to an unrealistic extreme, and the entire drudgery of the debate, its ceaselessness in your words, can be very well criticized through these lenses. Very few people will notice this; make that probably no one. But do realize that by just citing an inapplicable study, you dilute the rest of your article; it’s impossible to create irony if there is no foundation of truth on which to base it, contrast it and allow the reader to begin to notice the similarities, no matter how tenuous.
I personally feel that this post was written without an appropriate identification of the actual issue at hand. In the spirit of Ayn Rand’s above mentioned Prometheus association, the ban functions to strangle a significant representation of our humanity and national identity – a lit cigarette is THE metaphoric culmination of human industry. This ban is yet another symptom of the slow murder of America.
If this was supposed to be funny, I appreciate the attempt, but I think it ends up just being confusing. Also, why would a smoker not care if they can smoke On campus? I know it’s uncool to care about things and all, but it gets really unconvincing after a while.
that on the eve of fall break no one reading spec can take a chill pill and laugh at something funny. Anything involving Ayn Rand and mad men is, by definition, funny.
“Anything involving Ayn Rand and mad men is, by definition, funny.”
I feel sorry for people who have to be near you on a regular basis.