On Campus-The Need for Expansion of Smoking Booths on Campus 최종교정

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On campus-The Need for Expansion of Smoking Booths on Campus 최종교정.rtf

<On Campus>

<The Need for Expansion of Smoking Booths on Campus>

by Hwang, se-yeon, Social Reporter, charlevoix@mju.ac.kr

In March, a post protest saying, "Why is it hurting people who smoke only?" was posted on university’s SNS app, Everytime. And there were many comments about agreeing on this issue, and complaining that the school needs to take fast action about this. As a joke, some students say that the cigarette smoking is the reason why the only cherry blossom trees in the Social Science Campus is falling so fast because the smoking booth is right under the cherry blossom tree.

According to the newspaper ‘the Herald Business’, Myongji University turned its smoking booth into 'e-cigarette' booth. This is because students complained that smoking booths smell too much.

Myongji University has three smoking areas. But after one of them turned into a space for e-cigarettes, the space for smokers decreased even more. The two remained smoking areas operate as street smoking areas.

However, non-smokers prefer closed smoking booths because when they pass around the opened smoking booth, they claim that they suffer much from the smell of cigarettes.

However, according to the school’s reason, the situation is unavoidable, mainly because of the cost of purchase and installation fee of smoking booths. It usually costs 6 million won to buy a smoking booth alone, and 30 million won to set up a smoking booth, which is more expensive.

Take an example of Korea Foreign Language High School. The school did not have separate booths or smoking rooms for smokers until 2015. So the students smoked on the streets on campus, mostly in front of the building. The ashtray was not properly prepared, so cigarette butts that smokers smoked were left on the floor. Students who were non-smokers had to close their noses and grimace whenever they passed in front of the building. In the response of the student’s complaints, the school set up two smoking booths, but the number is far small compared with the huge size of the campus. For this reason, some students are still hiding behind the street or behind buildings because smoking booths are far away.

Other schools are also said to be at odds over the issue.

"Because there are no smoking booths in the school, many students smoke at the back of the building or at a place where garbage is disposed" said a 23-year-old female student from Gwangju Women's University. Smokers smoke in search of places where people do not go very well, but every passenger are exposed to second-hand smoking because the smell comes up from the building. He also said that last semester, there was a fire because someone did not turn off the cigarette light properly.

A 21-year-old student at Chosun University also said, "I smoke at outdoor benches because there is no place to smoke on campus." Therefore, an outdoor bench has become an implicit smoking room to smokers, and non-smokers said they do not pass through the area. In addition, most schools, including Kyungin National University of Education and Ewha Womans University do not have any proper smoking booths and smoking rooms.

In the case of Seoul National University, there are 15 designated smoking areas. However, these smoking areas are also not proper smoke places for smokers, but they are rather places such as public spaces, shelters, and stairs, next to the places or buildings where all students use, forcing non-smokers to smell cigarettes.

Everyone has the right to smoke. However, they also need to know that they can damage non-smokers’ rights to be healthy. If students no longer have a safe school life due to second-hand smoke, then whose fault is it? It is true that it is economically demanding to put all these smoking booths, and that the school cannot be fast enough to hear each of the student’s requests, but the school needs to be awake of this problem. We hope that the school takes quick and proper measures for this situation.