Holiday Menace Update

Happy Holidays Menace fans! I hope everyone is enjoying the month long break from classes and the general drudgery of school. I know I am! Although I took a few weeks break from general SA business, I began to yearn for the old office, and my comfy little cubicle. I also have quite a bit of work to do before the semester starts! In the P.R. department, we want to start getting more response from the student body in regards to SA events, decisions, etc. I'm going to begin drafting plans to place suggestion boxes around campus, and I also plan to take over the "pissed@uwm" email address.

While in the office today, Brent and I stumbled upon a dossier from the Physical Environment Committee, (that's the committee responsible for approving the CSM parking plan, still an unmitigated disaster, and bane of student welfare.) It seems taking away free student parking isn't the only thing these jokers have been planning. The lengthy package was a plan to completely ban smoking from every inch of the campus. That's right comrades, PEC is working on a way to stamp out cigarettes from UWM for good. Included in the plan was a report from the University of Kentucky-Louisville which explained how they banned smoking on campus, with much success. The report claimed the reason behind this gross infraction of student rights was to "promote healthier lifestyles and reduce campus pollution." Well I'll be fucked. Here we have another example of administration using undemocratic and heavy-handed tactics to enforce a rule without any real student support. Why undemocratic, you ask? PEC is a multi-member committee with around ten permanent members. Of those, three are students. Even though there are 30,000 of us on campus, and our tuition pays their salaries, it seems administration always expects their wishes to prevail.

If the powers that be were really so concerned with student health, they'd pay more attention to providing the campus with healthy options on campus, such as Vegan and Vegetarian options. If they were so concerned with reducing waste, they could take steps to ban water bottles, and enforce the use of refillable canisters. Hell, if cigarettes are such a problem, why not purchase some cigarette butt tubes, and place them around the entrances to popular buildings?

Regardless of whether you smoke or not, one must understand that these types of encroachments on student rights are reprehensible. We must take a strong stand here, because today it may be the smokers, tomorrow, who knows?

I plan to bring this up with the two student members of the PEC I know personally, Travis and Anthony, and urge them to vote "No" on this madness. I'll make sure to keep everyone updated.

Enjoy the rest of break!

-Red Menace, out