More collegians are lighting up

By Aaron Davis and Bree Fowler, USA TODAY

It's a fact of life on the nation's college campuses: the harder administrators try to discourage students from smoking, the more students smoke.

Today, more students are lighting up than at any time in the past two decades despite increasingly stringent attempts to stop them, from bans on smoking in classroom buildings to a growing trend toward smoke-free dorms and apartments.

But even a casual stroll across just about any campus provides visual documentation of a recent study by Harvard University, which found that 28% more college students smoke than just six years ago.

Smoking students can be seen everywhere outside the halls of academe, standing on heating grates at the University of Wisconsin, lounging outside the communications building at the University of Texas and turning cigarettes into an accessory of coffee, fast food, binge drinking and late-night studying.

"Regardless of student type, college size or location," says Henry Wechsler, an author of the Harvard study, "wherever you look there has been an increase" in student smoking.

All told, nearly 30% of all college students, or roughly 4 million students, smoke cigarettes, the Harvard study found. The rate troubles researchers because it means that, for the first time, smoking rates among college students - traditionally a cigarette-resistant group - are nearing smoking rates of young people who do not attend college.

College officials are taking notice. Fueled by a surge in student and parent complaints, colleges and universities across the country are rewriting smoking policies that have stood for decades.

The latest battleground has moved from classrooms and public buildings to students' personal space, where colleges are enforcing complete bans on smoking in dorms and apartments.

No one knows how many dorms nationwide are smoke-free, or even mostly smoke-free. USA TODAY surveyed the nation's 30 largest colleges and universities about their smoking policies, which affect more than 1 million students. At the 28 of those schools that provide student housing, 10 prohibit smoking in any of their dorm rooms or apartments. Another seven schools set aside just 10% of rooms for smokers.

The rest allow smoking in a varied number of rooms, though the no-smoking trend is clear. Beginning this fall, as many as five of the largest schools will declare more, if not all, of their dorm rooms smoke-free, including:

Purdue University, where the number of non-smoking rooms will triple next semester to more than 30%.

The University of California at Los Angeles and the University of Arizona, both with 90% smoke-free dorms, where student committees will vote this spring on whether to declare even more rooms no-smoking zones.

The University of Wisconsin at Madison, where smoking will be outlawed in all campus housing beginning this fall.

"We believe some students will opt to move off campus so they can continue to smoke in their own place," says Paul Evans, director of housing at the University of Wisconsin. "Yet we also expect other students will return to campus housing because they know it will be smoke-free."

"It's expected," says Eric Brakken, a Wisconsin senior graduating this spring. "However, I'm glad I won't be here next year. There are going to be some very cranky people when it drops to about 30 below zero."

And not just in Madison: Wisconsin's campus at Green Bay already has smoke-free dorms, and River Falls will go smoke-free this fall. The other 10 Wisconsin campuses are planning to institute smoke-free dorms in the future.

"This is a policy grounded on clear and concise medical data," says Mary Rouse, Madison's dean of students.

"There are more serious life-consequences from smoking than anything that I could dish out as dean. It's the duty of the college to continue teaching these lessons. If it takes banning smoking, I have no problem with that."

As it stands now, it appears most, if not all, schools eventually will end up doing just that.

Until then, says Mike Fitzgerald, manager for housing at Rutgers college in New Jersey, "it's going to be a nightmare."

Smoking is "the number one thing we look at when assigning student rooms," he says. " In terms of the non-smokers, they are often very upset when paired with a smoker - even if the student doesn't smoke in the room."

Why students smoke

According to many students, smoking has become part of the culture on today's campuses, where the anti-smoker stigma rampant elsewhere is much less of a factor.

But students say the growing number of smokers can't be blamed on cigarette advertising or peer pressure or even the ancient college tradition of rebellion. Instead, they say, students smoke for the reasons people always have smoked.

Despite the rising cost of cigarettes, massive evidence of the dangers of smoking and a government anti-smoking campaign that has gone on their whole lives, they light up with friends and at bars, on the weekends and to relax.

And while smoking is on the rise among all students, the growing number of student smokers who are women and black is even more pronounced.

Compared to the overall 28% increase in the number of college smokers, the Harvard study found 43% more black students were smoking, as were 31% more female students (Harvard's standard for determining smokers was whether a student had smoked in the previous 30 days, a common measure on smoking surveys).

Experts could not explain the increase of black smokers, but said a key reason for more female smokers might be weight control.

"Females seem to be encouraging each other to smoke," says Jody Gann, coordinator of the Alcohol and Drug Program at the University of Maryland. Gann leads smoking cessation programs on campus.

A 'temporary' habit

In interviews with scores of students nationwide, the same themes sounded: Most college smokers view smoking as bad but their habit as temporary - a way to get through those long nights of studying. Most say they'll quit later.

"I am so used to seeing students my age with cigarettes that it doesn't even register," says Chad Jordan, a junior at Indiana University in Bloomington who says he occasionally smokes at bars. "But when I see a professor or someone in their 40s or 50s smoking, I think, 'Don't you know better by now?'"

"There's some real truth to that mental picture of the test-crazed student we all have in our head," says Julie Eisenhardt, a senior at the University of Wisconsin, who smokes on the weekends. "It's the red-eyed student with a cup of coffee in either hand and a cigarette hanging from his lips. The coffee and nicotine diet - it's a staple at finals time."

Glenn Wong of the Cancer Center at UCLA puts it this way: "Many students believe smoking has potent short-term benefits. As long as they believe smoking helps them relieve stress or induce other responses, they will continue" to smoke.

These explanations set off alarm bells among experts who study student trends.

"This is clearly the sharpest increase in smoking among students we have seen in over 20 years," says Lloyd Johnston , principal investigator for the Monitoring the Future program at the University of Michigan. "The simple fact is, we are going to see more life-time smokers and we can't put our finger on why."

Students say it's not all that complicated, and with a certainty sure to leave millions of older ex-smokers shaking their heads, say that it's just for now.

"A lot of people smoke in college, but that doesn't mean there are a lot of smokers," says Joanne Pope, a junior at Rutgers who smokes during finals to relax. "It's just a bad habit for me. I don't see how I could get hooked."

Says Rutgers' graduate student Brian Pinaire, 24: "Beers, cigarettes - it's college, its fun. I'll die from drinking New Jersey water long before a few cigarettes catch up with me."

Snuffing out smoking

The smoking battles on campuses began in the mid-1980s, when cigarettes slowly began to be phased out of classrooms, administration buildings, lounges and student unions. Dorms were considered private space -- hands off.

But that changed in 1994, when the largest school in the nation, the University of Texas at Austin, with more than 48,000 students, extended its smoke-free policy from academic buildings to all university housing. In so doing, it set a precedent that would be copied around the country.

"Some students argued they should be able to smoke in their own rooms," says James Vick, Austin's vice president for student affairs. "But most agreed that the second-hand smoke simply affects everyone in dormitory-style living and that's not acceptable."

By 1996, state schools from the University of California at Berkeley to Penn State had joined the ranks of totally smoke-free dorms.

And while other big universities, including Ohio State, Michigan State and New York University, have hesitated to ban smoking completely, they have systematically classified larger and larger numbers of dorm rooms "substance free," where possessing cigarettes or alcohol can lead to fines or other punishment.

Most college administrators and students say no-smoking rules in dorms generally are observed, except for an occasional drunken student. Penalties range from fines to community service.

At some schools, such as the University of Maryland's 31,000-student College Park campus, support for substance-free housing is growing. Six years ago, just 130 students lived on the substance-free, fourth floor of Elkton Hall , termed "Wellness Housing." Today, more than 1,000 students occupy substance-free floors in dorms spread across campus, and the university says it will expand such floors this fall.

Students' voices heard

Before enacting smoke-free policies, students are at least consulted at every campus. At most, such as Arizona State, they have veto power.

That might prevent a complete ban on smoking any time soon, says Ken Piana, an Arizona State junior and director of the student-run Residence Hall Association - whose membership includes many smokers.

"I think it would be a pretty big inconvenience, especially on those nights when you're studying and stressing out," says Piana, who smokes at least half a pack a day.

In California, where many of the largest schools are smoke-free or close to it and state law also prohibits smoking in bars and restaurants, "students are being socialized that it's not acceptable," says Pam Viele, director of health education at the Arthur Ashe Student Health and Wellness Center at UCLA.

Still, she says, " Despite these restrictions, more students are smoking."

Others note that it may take more than strict policies to curb student smoking.

"I do endorse the policies that limit smoking indoors," says UCLA's Wong, "but it has caused the smokers to congregate outside. It may contribute to a false perception that more students actually smoke and therefore it's OK."

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