Many college students are constantly reminded about the difficulties of adult lives. Bills must be paid, responsibilities met, and the ever looming threat of next semester's tuition requires a thrifty lifestyle. Some students may balk at the harsh reality, but parents and teachers are quick to retort with the parental favorite, "You're an adult now, get used to it."
This idea of this adulthood does not seem to be reflected in what adult students are allowed to do. The new issue that faces UT this semester is one that is gaining support across Tennessee and America in general: anti-smoking policies.
UT has taken a step that inconveniences adult students and is taking away money from an already financially flailing university. Starting this semester, tobacco products can no longer be found in stores on campus.
If you are going to ban tobacco products, why not go ahead and shut down all the Starbucks on campus where coffee, a highly addictive and dangerously hot beverage, is served with reckless abandon? Why would a decision like this be made? Financially, the decision seems to make no sense. Why take away a product that users are addicted to? There is a guaranteed product base and, according to the Tobacco Technical Assistance Consortium, about 30 percent of college students use some form of tobacco.
According to the university, the ban is because of a law passed about two years ago that banned smoking in state buildings. However, this law says nothing about selling tobacco products. This does not seem like a logical decision.
It appears this decision was a morality-based decision. Students do not need the university to make moral decisions for us. If you are going to ban tobacco products, why not go ahead and shut down all the Starbucks on campus where coffee, a highly addictive and dangerously hot beverage, is served with reckless abandon?
Some campuses like ETSU have gone to even greater extremes by banning cigarette use on campus. Stricter regulations against tobacco users have become somewhat of a fad recently. In 2007, smoking was banned in most restaurants and bars. Sure, as an adult you can start and own your own restaurant on the strip, but if you smoke you better take it to the alley because you can't make the decision to smoke in your own establishment. Does that seem fair?
So now smoking students must visit the stores off campus to spend their money on tobacco, an inconvenience for adult students and a financial loss for UT. How do students know that this is not the first step in a series of anti-tobacco regulations? I humbly beg UT to stop interfering in the personal lives of its students. Or in the very least, stop telling me to act like an adult if you aren't going to treat me like one.
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