The Tobacco Free Trinity Consultation
What is a tobacco free campus?
A tobacco free campus is one that supports people who don't smoke by prohibiting smoking indoors and outdoors on college campuses. Over 1,000 third level campuses in America are tobacco free and in April 2013, Trinity began the process of consulting with the Trinity community about whether Trinity should be tobacco free or not.
What did the Tobacco Free Trinity consultation involve?
The Tobacco Free Trinity consultation was impartial, extensive and incorporated the following elements:
College Wide Survey
In April 2013, Trinity conducted an online survey to explore the College community’s support for Trinity becoming a tobacco free campus. We created an interactive infographic of the results which you can view here, or you can download the full survey report here.
The survey found that a majority of the College community support Trinity becoming a tobacco free campus. There was a large response from the College community and people were clearly interested in the idea.
Permission by Board to Consult with the Trinity Community
In May 2013, Board gave permission for a sub-committee of the Fire Safety Committee to conduct a consultation with the Trinity Community to determine the feasibility and acceptability of Trinity becoming tobacco free. The proposal made to Board is available here.
Town Hall Meetings
Oct - Jan 2013: All Trinity students and staff were invited to attend Town Hall Meetings to discuss Tobacco Free Trinity. There were five Town Hall meetings in total. Full details here. Based on these Town Hall Meeting discussions, three sub-groups were recommended.
Sub-Group Meetings
Dec 2013-Mar 2014: Three sub-groups were set up, each with a specific set of questions to discuss. Anyone interested in the topics being discussed was invited to attend. The final sub-group report is here. It also contains details of a sub-group for external stakeholders. Over 40 organisations that neighbour or are suppliers to Trinity were invited to attend.
Follow-Up Online Survey
Mar 2014: The final stage of the Tobacco Free Trinity consultation is a follow up survey to flesh out some of the issues raised during the consultation. This is a repeat of the initial survey but with questions added on designated smoking areas and how people could be encouraged to comply with the policy. All Trinity staff and students were invited to complete it. A comparison of the two online surveys is available here.
Final Consultation Document
The final consultation document which describes the entire consultation and the recommendations of the Committee, is available here. The Committee is working with the Students' Union and Graduate Students' Union to design a proposal for limiting smoking in College that they can support.