To
the Editor:
I am writing this letter in response to the letter
of Mr. Clarence Alston (Oct. 1) where he asserted that smokers have
no moral obligation to non-smokers. He wrote “every non-smoker
concerned with preserving whatever little health is lost from inhaling
minute quantities of second-hand smoke, should seek the ‘clear-air
path’ around the smokers.”
I just want to respond with two points. First,
there literally is no entrance to Whitener Hall where smokers do
not congregate, meaning that the “clean-air path” that
Mr. Alston refers to does not exist. Walk around the entrances at
the end of the day and you will see hundreds of cigarette butts
as evidence of this. Second, the issue is much larger than being
unable to pass through the entrances of Whitener Hall without breathing
in “minute quantities of second-hand smoke.” As dozens
of people have verified, smoke enters the building and remains for
some time in the hallways, staircases, some classrooms, and even
some offices of professors. Walk through the hallways on a rainy
or snowy day and you will experience this for yourself.
The bottom line is that Mr. Alston’s argument
is untenable. I appreciate the sincerity and civility with which
Mr. Alston wrote. But the fact should remain that “one man’s
rights end at the nose of another.” The congregation of smokers
at the entrances to Whitener Hall literally interferes with the
business of the departments that are housed there.
To
the Editor:
I would like to take a moment to question the
authority that the Interfraternity Council (IFC) on this campus
is really given. The Council, by definition is supposedly the governing
body over all of the fraternities on campus and makes recommendations
to the Center for Student Involvement in Leadership about policies
that affect the fraternities on campus. This past year I have noticed
that there have been decisions made about the Greek community, without
any input from the IFC.
The first one is the decision from Vice Chancellor for Student Development,
Dr. Gregory S. Blimling, who made the decision to defer our rush
process. He never once approached the Council to ask how the Greek
community felt about this, until he had already decided that freshmen
would not be allowed to join a fraternity starting this fall.
The second decision which has overstepped the
IFC came from Dino DiBernardi, the director of the CSIL, is the
new rules about fraternity party guest lists. Although I agree with
some of the policies that a stricter guest list would include, I
feel as though the Administration has taken away the voice of the
IFC, and has left the IFC to enforce the policies that the University
implements. I understand that the CSIL and the administration supercedes
the IFC, but I do feel that we should be represented before major
decisions are made from above that will greatly affect us.
