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dailyorange.com
2015 FO OTBALL GU I D E
free
THURSDAY
sept. 3, 2015
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SU faculty reflect on Katrina Employees discuss New Orleans’ progress since disaster 10 years ago By Sara Swann asst. news editor
As a native New Yorker, Valerie Martinez has seen first-hand from 9/11 the devastation that fire can bring. But in 2007, two years after Hurricane Katrina, she experienced the complete opposite: devastation from water.
We could see what we assumed were parks and healthylooking trees were now marshes and swamp lands. Syracuse University implemented a new smoking ban on July 1, making it one of 975 campuses in the United States to become tobacco-free. The new policy will be enforced through a community effort rather than through the Department of Public Safety. david salanitri staff photographer
SMOKE SCREEN SU uses community to enforce campus smoking ban By Alexa Torrens asst. news editor
S
yracuse University’s new tobacco-free policy may seem progressive, but the school was actually behind the curve in implementing one. “In many respects, we were slower to do this than many other places,” said Thomas Dennison, director of the Health Services Management and Policy program at SU. SU is now one of about 975 tobaccofree campuses in the United States. The SU campus is surrounded by organizations and properties that have
already gone tobacco-free, including Crouse Hospital, Upstate Medical University and the Syracuse VA Medical Center, Dennison said. Enforcement of the university’s policy will be based on community participation and a cultural change on campus. Under the new policy, students, faculty, staff and visitors may not use tobacco on any properties owned or leased by SU, with the exceptions of outdoor areas of the Carrier Dome, the Sheraton Syracuse University Hotel and Conference Center, Drumlins Golf and Tennis Club and Syracuse Stage. These spaces will not be covered by the tobacco-free policy
until July 2017, according to the SU tobacco-free website. “Many other universities of our size have gone tobacco-free long before us,” Dennison said. “So it’s not something that Syracuse University decided one day, ‘oh, let’s be tobacco-free.’ It was not a decision that administration suddenly decided was a good idea. It was a decision that came from the students.” Not only were students integral in pushing the policy forward, but they now play a key role in enforcing it. The policy that went into effect on July 1 isn’t enforced by the issuance see tobacco
ban page 4
Valerie Martinez
associate director for mentoring programs and diversity education
Martinez, who is currently the associate director for mentoring programs and diversity education at Syracuse University, volunteered through her alma mater, Wilkes University, to help recover and rebuild parts of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina hit. Ten years later, the city is still recovering in many ways. Martinez, as well as a majority of the other 35 people in her volunteer group, had never visited New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina, but when they landed, the signs of disaster were everywhere. “It was devastation. It was heartbreak,” Martinez said. “We could see what we assumed were parks and healthy-looking trees were now marshes and swamp lands… Houses were crumpled, which is the best way I can put it, see katrina page 8