final imrad

Smoking on Campus- University of Louisville

Should smoking on campus be punishable?

 

Abstract

“Should smoking on campus be punishable?” Is an important question to ask due to the amount of harm smoking can cause non-smokers and effects it could have on campus life. Most students that attend a university are in their early stages of adulthood, therefore their health is important. For this research a survey was created that asked six multiple choice questions, the survey was then sent out in a link to classmates and others that I knew lived on campus. Total responses numbered to 30, 20 females and 10 males responded. The results that were found indicated that more women than men thought that smoking on campus should be a punishable act. Also, the results shown that the smokers disagreed while the non-smokers agreed on punishment. The findings also changed the perspective upon the study, in the sense that began to acknowledge that smokers and non-smokers and men and women would have bias opinions and answers. What changed due to the findings would be that making on campus could be seen as both a punishable and non-punishable act, it all just depended on the person and how extreme the offense would be.

 

Introduction

Smoking has always been a problem in the state of Kentucky. In 2009, the University of Louisville became a smoke-free campus. “It seems very consistent with the university’s mission that we would be making strong statement that since we know that 80% of lung cancers are caused by either smoking directly or second-hand smoke that we would come out very strongly and say this is not something we think is good for people.” This quote relates due to the health hazard that Uofl saw with letting students smoke freely on campus, so they made a change. Smoking is not only an effect on the person that is smoking but also an effect on the people who are around the smoker. Most research or information that could be found on this topic of Uofl’s smoke-free campus focus on how the campus being smoke-free does not really make a difference. “For the smoke-free campaign to have a full and positive effect, U of L needs to take a proactive, rather than passive, approach to ending the smoking on campus — smokers should be fined if they are caught lighting up on campus” (Michelle Eigenheer) this quote acknowledges that some students have also acknowledge the lack of consequence for smoking in a smoke-free zone. The question is what is the punishment for smoking on campus? Uofl declared itself to be smoke-free and banned it from the campus, but there were no punishment for not following the rules. The point of this research was to get a better understanding to what the student body thinks of smoke-free policies not being properly enforced.

 

Method

Participants:

20 women and 10 men participated in this survey. The survey was created on SurveyMonkey.com and then sent to classmates and other pupils of the student body that attend the University of Louisville.

The survey results were checked periodically through a couple of days and the numbers only increased, then the numbers began to show and were written down to see if there were any correlations between questions.

 

Results

Table one acknowledges more women than men agree that smoking on campus should be a punishable act.

Table One: Punishable or Not?

Punishable?	Not Punishable?
Men:1 Women:13	Men:9 Women:7

Table Two: Smoker or Non-Smoker? Table two represents how the research found that non-smokers outnumbered smokers, and that most of the women were non-smokers. Most of those women also agreed that smoking on campus deserves some sort of consequence.

Smoker?	Non-Smoker?
Men:5	Men:5
Women:6	Women:14

 

Table Three: Did you know? Table three recognizes the difference in sex that was knowledgeable of Uofl being a smoke free campus. Also, the amount of smoker/non that were aware of this policy.

Aware of smoke-free campus policy
Male:6	Female:15
Smoker:7	Non-smoker:19

 

 

Discussion

The most important part of this study is the amount of people that believe that smoking on campus should be a punishable act. For example, maybe giving a fine to those seen smoking a campus, many lives could sheltered from the health problems that second-hand smoke causes. This example could possible make many improvements in the lives of those students who live on The University of Louisville’s campus. The problem with this study is that the study honestly depended on what the participants felt about smoking and what they knew of the effects of second hand smoking. A more effective way to get better results would have been submitting the survey with background information written first. The study showed the many bias opinions and also acknowledged the opinions very similar opinions of men/women and smokers/non-smokers.