Hookah on Campus

For the past two years, the group of peeps I refer to as my CSN group has been regularly bringing a hookah pipe or two to campus to share in the experience of smoking hookah tobacco. Doing so is perfectly legal under National, Nevada State, Clark County, and City of North Las Vegas law, and it is not against any College of Southern Nevada Regulations, so long as it stays within a designated smoking area. Because let's face it, hookah is a smoke-creating habit.

For the past two years, Allied Barton/ISS security officers posted at CSN as well as CSNPD officers have been harassing this particular group of hookah smokers. At first, it was for breaking actual rules of the college. Being too loud, being a nuisance, harassing other people. But once all of those rules were not being broken any more, the harassment of this group by said officers continued. It was of the sort that we couldn't smoke it in one particular designated smoking area, because parents were using that route to take their children to the day care center on campus and to take it to another smoking area. Comes to find out the smoking area they directed the group to was not a smoking area at all, and they had to tell us to take it to another smoking area. This was complied with. And a petition was sent to the board of regents for CSN about the initial smoking area.

There was a phrase in the petition about it not being marijuana being smoked, and a more thorough harassment ensued. On a weekly basis, the officers would come over to check if the hookah tobacco. Under orders from the property manager, they said. It is a legitimate argument, seeing as how that position is one of the very few on campus that can give orders to the officers. Another petition came out about this form of harassment came out, seeing as how the scent of the smoke did not in any fashion smell like marijuana. The petition was ignored.

Shortly thereafter, the same officers told us to take it to the last smoking area where it would not inconvenience other people passing by for us to smoke hookah. We complied. There was a belated petition to reverse this order. Again, it was ignored.

Then, just yesterday on the second day of the semester, we were told that the Head of Academic Affairs handed down an order to the CSNPD officers that hookah is now banned from campus. They tell us about this order, and we are forced to comply with the inappropriate threat of expulsion. It is inappropriate because it is, as of 02SEP2009, 1952 hours PDT, not in any formal writting anywhere in the Student Handbook, online at http://www.csn.edu, or posted anywhere on campus that hookah is not allowed.

This time around, we have a journalist for the school newspaper, the Coyote, writing a story about it. Which is a good thing. And again, there will be a petition written up, and we will be pushing for much more signatures than in the past. We will make sure, once it is submitted by hand, there will be CSNPD Officers and/or ISS Security Officers present. They will not ignore the petition this time around.

I'll make sure of it.

Take that as you will. -[alpha]{BETA}[delta]