The Satirical Smokeless Horseman
By Kate Holloway
SU fights for your lungs, against your happiness
To: Fight Ordinances and Restrictions to Control and Eliminate Smoking (FORCES) CC: Cash4Gold c/o Glenn Beck, Phillip Morris, and Sarah Palin Re: Malicious Attack on Historical Tradition
I discovered a dark plot to strip away one of our most precious God-given American rights: smoking on campus.
In an effort to promote “healthy living,” the Fascists known as the Syracuse University Student Association (SA) partnered with the communist Onondaga Health Department to enforce a campus-wide smoking ban, following in the footsteps of 420 other college campuses across the nation. This movement is a malignant tumor on the lungs of American college students, stopping them from enjoying that euphoric nicotine buzz. Just as our hero, Lauren A. Colby, feared in his 1999 In Defense of Smokers: “Nothing will [stop] the zeal of the tobacco prohibitionists except an eventual ban on all tobacco use.”
With a grant ominously titled, “Colleges for Change,” the Health Center conducted a study that found SU students live much like other college students. It’s not surprising that only 21.3 percent of students resist the liberal “higher-education” brainwashing by freely smoking cigarettes on campus. They’ve already started using totalitarian campuses, such as University of Buffalo, Cazenovia College, RPI, and SUNY Upstate, as case studies to ensure success. They’ve learned that an outright ban on smoking is too harsh and will shock campus smokers into action. Instead, they first prohibit smoking within 100 feet of university buildings. Then they slowly fuck us out of a place to smoke our precious cigs.
In a sweet-sensed irony, the current university policy would damage alliances with our greatest American corporate institution: Phillip Morris. The school would ban smoking inside any and all university buildings, so cancer-prone students wait in building overhangs at arctic temperatures to indulge in their stimulation. Apparently, this congregation of upstanding American students is offensive to anti-choice zealots like Neal Casey, the chairman of Student Life Committee in the SA Association.
“[The clouds of smoke] reflect poorly on our school,” I overheard Casey say while I passed out rally flyers proving that Obama is the original anchor. “If we’re trying to attract top talent, we shouldn’t have a cloud of smoke in front of our building.”
Casey also yammered on about the dangers of secondhand smoke. The filters that protect the lungs of the actual smokers are perfect tools of capitalism; they only work for those that pay for them. Come to think of it, smoking itself is an act of hardworking American capitalism. You appease your addiction to an American tradition—like dumping toxic chemicals into the waterways or exploiting an unskilled labor source—while polluting the environment for those around you. We must save this American symbol!
They say their measures will not be punitive. Instead, they will attempt to “re-educate” smokers on the dangers of inhaling this historical economic stimulator. But we all know “re-educate” is just code for “create little Fascists to do our smokeless bidding.” The initiative would also distribute smoking substitutes, like patches. See if the University Health Insurance policy will cover what Casey labeled as “cessation options.”
Unfortunately for us, Casey’s enthusiasm dropped hints that the idea of a ban is fairly popular among some students and staff. Also, there’s no “case law” supporting the idea that we have a fundamental American right to smoke. But that has never stopped us from twisting history to suit our interests before. America is a Christian nation. We must do all we can to make sure our opposition is heard. As a fringe group comprising 20 percent of the student body, we must fight for our raucous cancer coughs to be heard above the tyranny of the majority of students.
Sincerely, FORCES President, Syracuse University Chapter
Illustration by Andrew Casadonte