By Razan Matar | Staff Writer

In 2018, The American University of Beirut was certified a tobacco-free campus. This shift did help AUB sustain a cleaner and more environmentally friendly reputation, while also changing the community’s dynamics that were surprisingly present when smoking was still allowed on campus. To be more precise, smoking areas like ‘the zoo’ have been transformed from what they once were, an area where smokers gathered for a break and divulged in small talk among their peers. Fast forward to today in 2021, AUB’s main gate is crowded with dozens of students who gather and smoke together. The issue here is that this big number of people huddled about doesn’t only cause more congestion, but it does not maximize the goal AUB set out to make in 2018. The goal is served to create a better image for the university at large, so rationally, having students lined up in front of the main gate (the historical symbol of AUB) creates a more endearing image than just giving students a more well-monitored and designated place on campus to smoke.

For those who are unfamiliar with the extent of the main gate’s role, it is the hub from which new visitors, tourists, and professional connoisseurs pass through. It’s ironic that while the rule benefits the campus from an environmental standpoint, it puts the object it bans at the forefront. It’s the first thing a person witnesses before entering campus. For me, it honestly represents the Berlin wall, in which just a mere thirty inches or so completely change where you are and what’s acceptable for you to do. AUB is a massive campus that does not provide students a win-win solution towards giving students a specific place on campus to smoke, since having people smoke on Bliss only increases foot traffic in a drastic way. This is also bad in terms of the pandemic, with large groups of people grouped together at once. 

Instead of having a cigarette-filled walkway to AUB, having specific areas to smoke on campus is actually more beneficial knowing that the university board can actually regulate the waste from cigarettes by having trash bins in specified areas on campus rather than just countless cigarette buds leaving their marks on university walls on the main gate.  

A smoking ban on campus doesn’t really affect a student’s smoking habits, if part of the aim was to look after students’ own individual health. AUB is a leading force when it comes to being ahead of the times in terms of Lebanon. Yet, while AUB does a good job at keeping things in order behind its walls, the same effort isn’t projected when it comes to one narrow street known as Bliss.

The best solution is to have designated areas to smoke closer to the edges of the campus, where foot traffic and congestion won’t be due to smokers standing about leaning on the university walls while people try to get into campus. This also helps to keep AUB’s architecture clean, in which its stone walls won’t be littered with cigarette smoke and countless cigarettes laying on the floor. Having a specific place on campus for students also allows for facilitating a strict set of rules for smoking. For instance, having them throw their cigarettes in a clear trash can evaluate the density of how much individuals smoke. This initiative would help them visualize just how many cigarettes would have been scattered all over the floor if people didn’t attempt to gradually be more environmentally friendly with such a minor action as throwing these cigarette buds in the trash rather than the floor. 

It’ll only be rational for AUB to implement a new system that benefits both their visions as well as the students’ needs; this means working together more coordinately rather than apart.