Smokers’ Paradise at UCLA Now Off-Limits

One of the last bastions of public tobacco consumption on the Westside has fallen.

No-Smoking signs went up last week on three floors of UCLA’s Dickson Art Center, which the university’s art department occupies. It wasn’t the only remaining place on campus where smoking was permitted, but it was the most notorious.

As a state school, UCLA is exempt from local laws, such as the Los Angeles ordinance that took effect in August prohibiting smoking in public buildings and restaurants. Over the years, some individual departments at UCLA have restricted or banned smoking in specific buildings, but the only formal smoking policy, university officials said, was enacted in 1976. With few specifics, it restricted smoking where there was a health or safety reason to do so.

That status quo was shaken vigorously, however, by a Nov. 15 article in the Daily Bruin, the campus newspaper, which reported that smoking was permitted almost without restriction in 20 buildings at the university, and which quoted assorted students who were displeased at being exposed to so much smoke.

The article caused a flurry of activity at the university’s facilities management office.

“We were getting calls from various departments saying that the Bruin story was incorrect and (their buildings) were nonsmoking,” said Ruie Arnett, director of management services, adding that the list provided to the Bruin had not been updated since 1990.

Arnett directed her staff to update the list of buildings in which smoking was permitted. Within a week, a revised list of “smoking” buildings was issued, showing only five: Dickson Art Center, Dodd Hall, Kinsey Hall, Perloff Hall and Moore Hall. Ten other buildings had designated smoking areas.

Dickson, described by many students as the smokiest of buildings at UCLA, appeared likely to remain so. In an interview late last month, Henry Hopkins, chairman of the art department, said an agreement would need to be reached among the art, art history and design departments housed at Dickson before a smoking ban could be imposed.

“It is not (just) a question of putting up signs tomorrow,” Hopkins said.

A few days later, however, that’s exactly what happened. No-Smoking signs were posted Nov. 30 in every classroom and hallway on floors six through eight, the art department’s quarters.

The change was a relief to smoke-sensitive students such as Suzanne Ecker, who said she has made a nuisance of herself over the past year asking people not to smoke near her.

“I am extremely pleased with the ban,” Ecker said. “But I hope the university, after reviewing its policy, will ban smoking from all university buildings.”

One of the smokiest places within Dickson, Ecker and other students said, was a weekly four-hour sculpture class taught by Prof. Nancy Rubin, in which Rubin smoked much of the time and students would light up without a second thought.

“It’s a ridiculous issue,” Rubin said last week. She declined further comment on the policy change.

Management services director Arnett said the city of Los Angeles smoking ban has compelled the university to revise its smoking policy. She said she is writing a no-smoking policy that will encompass all buildings on campus, but campuswide approval is needed before it can go into effect.

“It is something that we have been concerned with for a long time,” Arnett said. “The campus has been very cognizant of becoming nonsmoking.”