Power puff protest

Grand Forks Herald, N.D. By Yangkyoung Lee
2007-10-06

Power puff protest
Source: Grand Forks Herald, N.D.

Oct. 6--Nick Cuskey doesn't respect UND's new tobacco-free policy.
So in an act of protest Friday, the UND student lit up one cigarette after another.
The aviation senior didn't hide. He puffed for five hours right in front of the Memorial Union, where there used to be a cigarette receptacle. He went through a whole pack.
And Cuskey wasn't alone Friday, the day UND's campus went tobacco free. Five smokers were with him. They were joined by another, and then several more.
"I usually don't smoke like this," Cuskey said. "But we are doing this for the sake of our rights to smoke. Everybody knows that smoking is bad, and yes, I know that."
"We are addicts," Cuskey continued. "You cannot just take that away from us saying that it's not good for us. . . (the) smoking ban is an ill-advised policy, and how they did it is not correct."
Like wildfire
Cuskey gathered fellow like-minded students and formed a group about three weeks ago.
Through words of mouth and the Facebook online network, close to 81 students expressed interest in participating in the "peaceful" protest, Cuskey said.
He said about 25 people showed up on the rainy and chilly Friday protest that began at noon and ended a little after 5 p.m.
All six smokers who were still smoking and protesting past 4 p.m. said they always respected nonsmokers and smoked 20 feet away from the building, the previous UND smoking rule.
"I try to be as courteous as possible when I smoke," said Cuskey, who's been smoking eight years.
"Yeah, we respect non-smokers' rights, too," another protester, Nick Gowan, agreed.
"I smoke far away from a building, and like today, when children passed us by, we stepped aside to keep the smoking from them," Cuskey added.
'Silly' policyGowan said the smoking ban is "a kind of silly" policy.
"People are not going to stop because of this," said Gowan, a freshman international studies major. "And I am not going to stop. They cannot expel us for smoking, can they? It's just a waste of time and money. I would like to quit someday, but not now."
Even though they said the protest was peaceful and harmless, several complaints of their audacious and outright violation of a less-than-day-old school policy reached a school official.
"The assistant vice president came and told us he received some complaints," Cuskey said. "That was it. We continued smoking after that. As I said before, it's impossible to enforce the policy."
The protesting students said what they want is a "compromise."
"The whole process was just too quick," Jayson Danto said. "There wasn't a step 1, then step 2 and then step 3. It's just too extreme.
"I come from a smoking family," said Danto, a junior commercial aviation major. "But it's my choice. I am addicted to cigarettes. We find comfort in that. And I am not ready to quit smoking yet. Pushing ideas is not right. They are trying to scapegoat smokers."
'Defrauding'Cuskey said the reason why the university adopted the smoking ban policy is that it can cut its health insurance policy.
"Now they can say they have this campuswide smoking ban," Cuskey said. "They want to go down on their insurance. People will still smoke. But from the outside, it looks like people are getting healthier. They are defrauding insurance companies. And UND is not the only one. It is happening everywhere in America now."
The students also said even though the university announced its intention to go tobacco-free a year ago it seems many students are neither aware of it nor had enough chances to make their voices heard.
"They said the Student Senate approved it, but it seems like the Student Senate didn't do their job in letting their constituents know about the ban," Cuskey said. "Look at the national or state politicians. Do they go around door to door and explain about a policy? Nope."
"It happened too fast," said Skeeter Hedoesit, a biology health science and anthropology major. "There were not many outlets where we could put our input."
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