In the face of what seems an all-too communicable disease of irrationality and paternalistic overreaching when it comes to the politics of vice, a committee on campus seems to be gallantly administering a cure; and doing so armed with those great antibodies of the Liberal Arts education: critical thinking and informed argumentation.

In a recent Stinger article, The Ban That Looms, staff writer Patrick Lilja quotes Jake Lindberg, part of the committee “proposing alternatives to a full smoking ban” on campus, as arguing at least one sorely needed thesis, the merit of which should be obvious to any frequent visitor to the freshly “smoke-free” campus of the University of Minnesota - Duluth. That is, Lindberg and his committee are arguing “campuses that went smoke-free often saw an increase in litter”, and furthermore, that “the smoking bans did not actually persuade students to stop smoking.” Lindberg clearly has paid attention in class, and we should heed his arguments, and more importantly, his example.

Lindberg’s insights may seem like a few of modest observations that deserve a hearing in any discourse surrounding a smoking-ban – of course, they are – but more than that, they are pointedly devastating to the only argument Student Body President Jessica Duffy is quoted as making in support of her position - that, in time, UWS should be a smoke-free campus. “All of us can have a clean environment,” Duffy says. As gauzily inclusive and appealing as that platitude may seem, in terms of the actual stakes of this particular debate, its intentions are quite precisely contradicted by the evidence articulated by Lindberg.

But one needn’t take Lindberg at his word. Nor is it necessary to seek recourse in heaps of statistics or piles of scholarly journals to measure Lindberg’s claim, it takes only a bit of experience. Try this: journey to the campus of UMD, and take a short stroll around one the many zones of congregating smokers. Between classes is a good time, but the actual presence of smoking college kids is utterly unnecessary to find these zones, the sudden proliferation of cigarette butts will undoubtedly suffice. The popular smoking area just outside of the Library is a fine and representative example - and the one, as a Duluth-residing student of UWS who makes frequent use of its resources, I am most familiar with. Here, on any given day, any observer familiar with even the most dreadfully littered areas of UWS (like outside of some of the dorms) will, I wager, have no trouble noticing the far greater proportion of cigarette butts underfoot on Bulldog territory. The reason for this disparity, it seems to me, is simple: upon enactment of UMD’s smoking ban, the university removed all cigarette receptacles. Thus, in a sense, it seems the ban at UMD has simply trained these Bulldog smokers to deposit their butts indiscriminately about the ground. In this light, Duffy’s goal for “all of us” to have a “clean environment”, as laudable a desire that is, seems to be endangered by her support of a total smoking ban.

Of course, this modest bit of experiential knowledge addresses only one of Lindberg’s claims, and it has its limits - I will be the first to admit. Perhaps some incontrovertible empirical evidence will emerge that proves that full smoking bans do indeed produce an overwhelming reduction in student smoking. I would welcome such evidence and its use in the beneficial battle of informed argumentation. My point here is not to convince you that smoking must continue on campus, but just to point out that arguments like Lindberg’s, as opposed to Duffy’s pleasant platitudes, are actually grounded in evidence and experience, and serve as, however subtle, heartwarming evidence that the stated goals of this liberal arts institution are indeed finding accomplished expression in some of its students. Perhaps I am being too hard on President Duffy, and she harbors something deeper than the platitude quoted in Lilja’s article. Perhaps she is right now gathering proof that smoking outside on the region’s windiest campus can have some provably negative effect upon the respiratory health of passersby, and that this imposition is, in fact, rightfully cast in terms of one’s right to a “clean environment”. I hope so, but I doubt it.

Patrick Lilja, in his article, repeatedly describes the smoking ban debate as “divisive.” But, despite the usual pejorative associations this word arouses in the realm of the political, I for one welcome it. For it is in difference, in division, that the gifts of a Liberal Arts education, a facility for critical thinking especially, are best and most productively marshaled. Also, let us not forget that community is too often touted as an end to division, to divisiveness, but this end is often merely one particular and dominant view of the just and good community ossified as normative in the minds of its docile subjects – too often precluding the kind of necessary and illuminative dissent that Jake Lindberg has proven himself so capable of. Let us follow his example and put our liberal arts educations to good use.