Last Tuesday, the San Diego State Senate heard an update announcing the new campus-wide smoking ban will go into effect Jan. 1.

Students, faculty, staff and visitors will no long be able to use the 12 designated smoking areas on campus. All of SDSU and its auxiliary organizations will be affected by the new smoking policy.

“There are no exceptions,” University Senate Chair William Eadie said.

The new policy is “socially enforced,” according to terms of agreement for the new smoking policy. Before a fine is set in place, another meet and confer process with California State University Employees Union would take place.

Associated Students Vice President of University Affairs Morgan Chan said the policy went through a similar process with the California State University Employees Union to create a set of terms to make this ban possible.

The SDSU Senate voted last April to ban smoking on campus. The vote then went to President Elliot Hirshman for approval.

During a speech at the SDSU Senate meeting on Tuesday, Hirshman said he wanted to hold off approving the smoking ban for the meet and confer process to determine the points of possible conflict.

Office of Employee Relations and Compliance Director Tom Harpole said he worked on “vetting the senate’s policy.”

“We had an obligation to let the union’s know that we were planning to implement the policy,” he said.

Since this was just an update for the smoking policy being implemented, senators did not speak for or against the new policy.

SDSU Student Health Services offer a student smoking cessation class to help kick the habit. Faculty and staff who want to quit smoking can contact the SDSU Center for Human Resources.

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