Carl Albert State College regents unanimously voted Tuesday to make the campus 100 percent buy cigarette online free.
The policy will take effect Aug. 1.
CASC Vice President of Student Affairs Leah McLaughlin originally presented the regents with a policy that would ban only smoking cigarettes and leave other forms of buy cigarettes unrestricted.
However, the regents decided to amend the policy to include all forms of tobacco.
“It would be very easy to change it to tobacco-free,” McLaughlin said, adding that the student government, which originally pushed for the policy change, would support the change.
The faculty and staff at CASC were also supportive of the original smoke-free policy, McLaughlin said. She said 79 percent of the faculty and staff supported that measure, 18 percent weren’t supportive, and 3 percent were undecided. Students were 70 percent in favor of the original smoke-free policy, according to McLaughlin.
The tobacco-free policy was quickly amended following Tuesday’s meeting to include all forms of cigarettes and is still subject to change, said Judi White, CASC’s public relations director. It includes all forms of tobacco, including electronic cigarettes, and states that visitors are subject to the ban. Tobacco-use cessation programs will be available to those who desire to quit using tobacco.
The initial policy includes three parts regarding enforcement.
Faculty and staff who violate the policy will be handled by the Office for Human Resources, and supervisors will be made aware of the violations and help with the discipline process.
The Office of Student Conduct will handle student violators.
The Office of Campus Police will handle visitors who violate the policy. “Visitors will be informed that CASC is a tobacco-free campus. Visitors who continue to violate the policy following a warning will be escorted off-campus,” the policy states.
McLaughlin also said if larger universities in the state like Oklahoma State University are tobacco-free, then CASC can implement the policy as well.
According to the American Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation, 639 colleges and universities in the country — including all public colleges and universities in Arkansas and 17 in Oklahoma — are 100 percent smoke-free as of Jan. 2.
According to the American Lung Association, 258 colleges and universities in the country — including seven in Arkansas and 12 in Oklahoma — prohibit smoking cigarettes and all forms of tobacco everywhere on campus as of January 2012.
The next step is advertising the change as well as training and preparing the campus for the change, McLaughlin said.
Also Tuesday, James Yates, vice president of academic affairs, presented the regents with preliminary enrollment figures for the spring 2012 semester.
According to Yates, 2,542 students are enrolled at CASC this spring. On the Poteau campus were 1,708 students, 767 students are enrolled at the Sallisaw campus, and 67 are enrolled online, Yates said.
The numbers are preliminary and could change because today is the last day of enrollment, and there is a period where students can add or drop classes.
The numbers are a “slight increase,” which is “very positive,” Yates said.
“We won’t know until the final numbers are in,” he said.
The regents also unanimously approved the removal of a $15 fee students pay to graduate. CASC President Brandon Webb said he wanted to remove any barrier students might have to graduate.
“We shouldn’t ask them to pay for this milestone,” he said.