For the two months that I've been at Columbia, the debate around smoking on campus has been almost ceaseless. The issue has been discussed time and again at the University Senate town halls as students have argued whether we should maintain the current 20-foot ban or enlarge this ban to cover all of campus. On one extreme we have chain-smokers, and on the other, health nuts—but most of us fall somewhere in the middle. The student body is majorly ambivalent: 50 percent of students say this isn't even an issue for the University.
Personally, I don't care what happens, and I smoke. But maybe we need to reframe the argument in order to get somewhere with this debate. We have some serious questions to pose in looking toward the future of this campus. For example, what sort of university do we want to be? Whenever I think about what sort of person I want to be, I ask myself: "What would Don Draper do?"
