Nov. 3, 2015

Like at least a few others, I was caught off-guard by the recent approval of the initiative to ban tobacco from campus. Incidentally, I may have also been one of a few to note the irony of an internal shared governance violation at this point in our university’s history. Nevertheless, the process that was undertaken – one that has been years in the making – is instructive in a number of ways, not the least of which is its fulfillment of the principle that public input matters little when there is an institutional commitment to a particular outcome.

I will never be an advocate for an absolute democracy that disregards the logic of organizational hierarchy or invokes “the will of the people” for express political gain. Nor do I harbor any illusions that the majority of our campus would not welcome a smoking ban. I think most would.

But we may recall that the Whitewater Student Government vote last year to reject the tobacco-free resolution was met with    imediate protest and demands for a revote because it failed to produce the outcome desired by those who initiated the process in the first place. We would have saved ourselves much time and precious resources by simply enacting the ban the moment a decision was made to gauge “campus interest” in the issue. As my students will attest, I have not been coy in presenting this ban as inevitable. It has always been so, and any claims to the contrary are disingenuous.

Likewise, one needn’t have been clairvoyant to regard the 25-foot smoking barriers outside of campus buildings as little more than temporary stopgaps on our tobaccoless road to health utopia. A task force was formed to investigate current tobacco policy. Does anyone think this organizational body would have ever put forth recommendations other than to deem a smoking ban in our best interest?

There is a broader lesson to be learned here, one that might apply to the social democracy in which we now find ourselves. As students might come to realize, the problem with allowing voters – or even their representatives – to decide policy matters is the prospect that they might vote the wrong way. That would require the heavy-handed and direct negation of their will, and bald authoritarianism is never to be exercised when the soft, benevolent kind will do.

So, for our own purported good, smoking (and vaping, and chewing, and hookah) is out. Be sure to smoke-shame your neighbor should he be found offending this element of our health sensibilities. In the mean time, since heavy drinking has tacitly been legitimized as a form of self-expression, have a few extra shots this weekend to compensate for the loss of that smooth, mellow nicotine buzz. What could possibly go wrong?

Mark Zunac

Associate Professor, UW-W

Languages and Literatures