CCSC addresses smoking, dining

WEB EXCLUSIVE. Columbia College Student Council talked cigarettes and meal plans at Monday night’s meeting, as proposals for meal plan changes and campus smoking regulations were met with tepid receptions.

The meeting, led by Vice President of Student Life Robyn Burgess, CC’09, in CCSC President George Krebs and VP of Policy Adil Ahmed’s absence, touched briefly on the reevaluation of gender blind housing on campus—an issue that council members thought would require more research but would be worth seriously addressing in the near future.

But suggested meal plan modifications, presented by Student Service Representatives Aaron Edmonds , CC ’09 , and Priyanka Gumaste, CC ’10 were debated among council members who wondered if a mandatory but heavily reduced meal plan—one meal per week for sophomores, juniors and seniors at the least—would be an effective way to improve campus dining and boost revenues for the service. Representatives also suggested converting Ferris Booth into a second swipe-dining location, which would open up swipe options instead of continuing to rely on dining dollars, and would provide an alternate eating location for those with meal plans. But other members said that asking students to return to a meal plan with the good-faith promise that food would improve sometime in the abstract future would be a hard sell, and that turning Ferris Booth into another swipe-location would lead to lower food quality.

A campus smoking ban suggestion was similarly contested. While New York State law requires smokers to stand at least 20 feet away from buildings, a campus-wide ban, some argued, could be near-impossible to implement on such an open campus housing multiple institutions. Senior class representative Colin Felsman called the proposition "spartan and ineffective,” and doubted that pushing for it would be particularly productive.

While the ban would address concerns about second hand smoke and complaints of smoke wafting into dorm rooms, other suggestions of less-drastic changes, such as moving ash trays away from heavily populated areas and dorms, were seen as more reasonable goals. A hand count revealed that no one on council supported the idea of pursuing a smoking ban on campus.