Reprinted with permission.
MENOMONIE — Designated students at UW-Stout are reminding their classmates smoking isn't allowed on campus in an effort to crack down on violators of the university's smoke-free regulations.
A dozen students who have received training monitor the campus for potential smokers, campus police Chief Lisa Walter said. Monitors work in teams of two Mondays through Fridays and work a varied schedule depending on when they are in class.
Monitors wear a name tag identifying them as a smoking monitor. They carry cards to give to anyone found to be violating the campus' no-smoking rules. Those cards include information about the university's tobacco ban policy and how to stop tobacco use.
"UW-Stout has employed a group of students who basically go and have conversations with the few people not complying with the tobacco policy," said Doug Mell, UW-Stout executive director of communications and external relations who is chairman of the Tobacco-Free Campus Police
Implementation Committee.
Mell said the monitors are helping, but he believes the tobacco ban has become part of the campus' history. Only the current senior class would have been on campus when smoking was still allowed.
Smoking on campus was banned at the start of the 2009-10 school year after students voted in April
2009 to prohibit smoking on campus.
"The freshmen, sophomores and juniors, all they have known is UW-Stout as a tobacco-free campus,"
Mell said. "It's becoming part of our DNA. It is who we are at UW-Stout."
Walter said monitors haven't reported being treated disrespectfully by people they have encountered smoking.
"We still have a handful of people who take a card from a monitor three times a week," Walter said.
"Anecdotally, I can tell you I see less smoking on campus."

Reprinted with permission.
Walter said the student monitoring program will be assessed at the end of the semester to see if changes are needed.
UW-Stout was the first and remains the only four-year UW System campus to ban tobacco products on campus.
At least 825 campuses across the U.S. are smoke-free, including about 15 in Wisconsin, according to the UW-Stout Office of Communications. UW-Baraboo/Sauk County is the only other UW System institution on the list. Most of the rest are technical colleges.
Last week UW-Stout Chancellor Charles Sorensen delivered the keynote address at the Summit on
Tobacco-Free Campuses in Madison. Sorensen said he hopes his message will spur other campuses to consider banning tobacco products.
"Our focus on being non-Draconian has worked," Sorensen said. "With the monitoring program, we have polite young people reminding people not to smoke."
The policy also sends a message about the dangers of using any form of tobacco, Sorensen said.
"There is very good evidence that a policy like this will help prevent some people from becoming smokers and may help other to quit," he said. "This policy will save lives."
Powers can be reached at 715-556-9018 or pamela.powers@ecpc.com
.