New signs on Ohio University's campus are designed to support the school's smoking policy by encouraging students to call the Ohio Department of Health when they see violations.
Beverley Wyatt, director of housing, said it is a difficult policy to enforce and she hopes the new signage helps.
Over the winter break
we did a number of things Wyatt said. We decided to make some posters to put in the residence halls so that students were aware that the university does have a smoking policy and that our policy does state that you have to be 10 feet away from doors windows or areas where air intake occurs.
Joe Adams, director of environmental health and safety, wrote the policy. Adams said the new signage is in accordance with the university smoking policy that was enacted in March 2009.
It was just a matter of time and trying to get to all the buildings and all the locations. We've got like 220 buildings. We just can't do them all at once
Adams said.
Wyatt said residential housing and facilities management also are working on moving smoking urns away from university buildings.
We realize that the policy says that you have to be 10 feet from the building
but in some instances
those smoking urns were right next to the doors. ... We are currently working on removing those urns and installing new ones that are at least 10 feet away from building
she said.
Adams said anyone can call and report an offense to ODH.
They would ask you a series of questions
and you would file a complaint. Someone from ODH would be assigned to investigate that complaint. It could be a telephone investigation or an on-site investigation
but someone would investigate
he said.
Adams said he was not aware of any cases reported or investigated at OU since the policy was put into effect.
There are known hazards from environmental smoke. ... It's important to protect our people from secondhand smoke and the environmental contamination
so we elected to go with a no smoking policy in the buildings
