The UD student body has now endured a little over a semester of DSAs and the mandate of green boxes for eating on the mall. The result is mixed. There has clearly not been a decrease in cigarette consumption by UD students, but, in practical terms, smoking has been moved to the margins.
The Mall used to be the center of UD culture and social life, and on any given day, there would be large groups of students on the mall at any time. Contrast this with today, where few, if any, will eat on the Mall. Aside from school-organized events on the Mall, we see no great gatherings of students enjoying their time in an area once reveled in for its iconic place on our campus. Granted, there have been increased school-organized events, which increase traffic on the Mall, but this still deprives the Mall of its former status as a student-led, cultural space.
UD students lost certain privileges based on complaints by the cafeteria regarding students leaving plates on the mall. This, of course, is a failing of the student body, and yet the repercussions seem disproportionate. A more appropriate response would have been to limit student activity in other areas, such as creating stricter curfew limits. I say this because enforcement in such a large area as the Mall is impractical, and the controlling of social spaces has little other than banning activities that can be done to control it.
What, however, was more shocking was the sudden, unprompted limit of smoking on campus. I would wax poetic about the great smoking protest of UDs past, but Gen Z is a new generation, and we are used to having simple activities deprived from us and simply carrying on. Instead, I question the point of the DSAs. I am familiar with the justification that this was not a ban on smoking, but quite clearly it was a mass restriction of a cherished UD tradition, and if the upholding of tradition gives voice to UDers past in our democratic society, then this move ought to certainly be seen as an executive decision made without the consent of the student body.
Ostensibly, the move was made for health reasons, such as one tragic case involving students ignoring the “Do Not Smoke” signs near Braniff, and the turn-off of smoking as a practice to prospective students. However, this move has not resulted in higher student enrollment, nor is it likely to. Additionally, UD as an institution is not the school and its administration alone, but includes its student culture, which attracts like-minded students to a unique experience, even among Catholic higher education. I have long heard it said that UDers are the lovable rogues of conservative higher education, and we should wear this title with pride.
To do so, we must be allowed to engage in an organic, student-led culture which includes the eccentricities, idiosyncrasies, traditions and peculiarities we have built across generations, of which smoking is one.
Nobody is claiming that smoking isn’t bad for people’s health. Still, in an era defined by increased youth nicotine consumption, smoking represented UDs commitment to a traditional American lifestyle, which includes smoking cigarettes. Freely embracing this activity with limited restrictions in the past was something to brag about to friends back home and added to the mystique of our small community. Now we are exactly like the rest of the country with DSAs.
Some may respond that the right to smoke has still not been banned, but I again apply this to the fact that, like it or not, smoking is a social activity that students bond over. It may also be said that smoking is not necessary to uphold a traditional American way of life, and while in values this may be true, life, especially social life, has always been dominated by aesthetics. The image of the cigarette-smoking American in military fatigues or jeans with a cheeseburger in hand is an icon across the world that, in modern parlance, goes incredibly hard and intrinsically proclaims patriotism, grit and a vitality for life.
The image of the UDer as a loose rule-follower with a classical education, committed faith and instinctual, rather than instilled, sense of wonder is what differentiated us from our, let’s be honest, more uptight cousins at St. Thomas, Wyoming Catholic and Hillsdale colleges.
Nobody is advocating for blowing cigarette smoke in an asthmatic student’s face, for which write-ups, Student Life counselings and fines are sufficient punishment, but rather for a return of that most vital organ of the UD social scene to its former glory.