COLUMN: Clearing the air

From Mike Liskey's, "The Road Less Traveled," Fall '96 From Mike Liskey's, "The Road Less Traveled," Fall '96Forget personal freedoms.From Mike Liskey's, "The Road Less Traveled," Fall '96Forget personal freedoms.Smoking is a habit thatFrom Mike Liskey's, "The Road Less Traveled," Fall '96Forget personal freedoms.Smoking is a habit thatmakes everyone sick. From Mike Liskey's, "The Road Less Traveled," Fall '96Forget personal freedoms.Smoking is a habit thatmakes everyone sick. I woke up one morning last week not feeling well, and for once it wasn't because of the previous night at some random bar. I wondered if spending several hours in the below-freezing temperature of Van Pelt Library had anything to do with my symptoms. I forced myself down to Student Health Services. Cutbacks in health care meant I would probably be seen by a first-year Med student trying to work off the damage caused in first anatomy lab. To my surprise, there were no Med students around. In fact, I was fortunate enough to be seen by a Dr. Sacks, who had a fatherly attitude that made me feel comfortable. He listened to my concerns and answered all of my questions. Sacks would be over-qualified (too compassionate and sensitive) to be head of physician training at the Med School, but he sure would do a good job. It often seems the open-hearted (and closed-walleted) Wharton School heads those programs. Leaving Student Health with a clean bill of health, a revelation hit me. I knew what I had been doing differently: I had been hanging out with too many smokers in confined areas. I was so happy to have diagnosed the cause to all my ills, but I quickly became frustrated because I also realized how difficult it is to stay away from smokers. Unlike the police, they are everywhere; if every smoker was deputized, Penn's crime problem would be over. I have never seen so many smokers concentrated in one area in my life as I have on campus. Maybe Quakers used to be tobacco farmers. There are just too many smokers at Penn -- and I don't just mean office workers wanting to shorten their miserable existence on this planet, I mean students! Grad and undergrad. Male and female. Pacifists and lawyers. Butt-heads are lighting up all over the place and adding to the already polluted air supply. Butt-heads are completely careless when blowing their smoke. Why should they care where it blows? They already have their buzz or fix. While walking, they will blow smoke out of their mouths softly, directly attacking the person walking behind them. Death by paper clip is the appropriate punishment when this happens. Butt-heads have polluted every room and corridor of Houston Hall. The Hall of Flags dining room has a "no smoking" sign and instructs walking cancer nodes to go upstairs to the balcony if they want to slowly suffocate themselves. The only problem is that the two floors are not separated by any ceiling or barrier. The smoke eventually builds up and makes its way down to the lower level, filling the whole room. By 11:00 a.m., the air is noticeably contaminated. After the lunch rush, the environment is unbearable. It reminds me of Los Angeles on a sunny day. Of course, it makes too much sense for the University to ban smoking inside all facilities and buildings. This is, after all, the same administrative buffoonery that can't guarantee students' safety in the campus community and is blind to the positive campus bond that would be created by a graduate pub or cafe on Locust Walk. Butt-heads are the most disgusting and annoying people on this planet. Yes, even more than lawyers, Whartonites and whiners wanting their organization incorporated. I have no respect for anybody who smokes. It is not sexy for women, and it is not macho for men. I usually let people keep their disgusting habits to themselves, but the smoking habit is shared with everybody else. I love to hear smokers whine about smoking being an individual liberty and smokers having the right to do whatever they want with their bodies. I am forever an advocate of personal freedoms, but smoking is not a personal freedom because it negatively affects others. It is not a personal freedom to go out and shoot somebody -- although "alleged gunman" Chris Crawford, the suspected triggerman in the botched robbery of Patrick Leroy may disagree -- because it violates his right not to be shot. Non-smokers have the right not to breathe the putrid, second-hand air Butt-heads exhale. This human exhaust causes nausea, headaches, immune-system breakdown and an inability to think clearly. Non-smokers have been getting burned (no pun intended) on this issue since the beginning of those government-sanctioned, genocidal institutions they call tobacco companies. However, Butt-heads are the ones who keep these institutions in business and that is their individual choice. I am all for an individual's right to die. If a person wants to kill himself, then let him do it. I just wish he and his buddies would do it more quickly than by smoking, so innocent people don't have to die, too. Jack Kevorkian, "Dr. Death," should add smokers to his list of people eligible for his assistance. Or maybe they should just take a trip to the corner of 40th and Locust streets around 2 a.m. Somehow, Butt-heads need to be wiped from the face of the earth -- or at least their habit, and its disgusting filter-filled paper remnants, needs to be blown away.