I haven't seen the health crisis at Amherst depicted by the Student's Feb. 28 Editorial on smoking ("Students' Wellbeing Goes Up in Smoke If Rules Remain Ignored"). The medical dangers of cigarettes, both first- and second-hand, are not up for debate, and I choose not to smoke them myself. That said, I have a hard time swallowing that "the guy who draws on his cigarette at the entrance to Moore, your neighbor who smokes up in her suite in Stone and that Val worker who puffs away at the rear entrance to the dining hall are all, in essence, killing the rest of us slowly."

I was under the impression that one needs to actually inhale some smoke to suffer any effects, let alone die slowly. Of the examples above, only Stone's smoker is putting anyone in real danger of getting a lungful-and if her smoke is infiltrating others' rooms or the hallways, a good neighbor should ask her to remedy that. I'm less worried about the Moore guy or the Val worker; from what I've seen smoke dissipates pretty quickly outdoors-even if you're not standing 25 feet from the building.

And about those strange, arbitrary 25 feet: Weather.com tells me Amherst is minus-17 degrees Fahrenheit today including wind chill, and honestly, I'd rather see smokers a few feet from my dorm's stoop than "complying" in a snowdrift on the quad. While "poisoning other students" is certainly reprehensible, and students doing that should cut it out, I believe a new "vigilance" with cigarettes would do more harm than good on a campus already wondering if "Campus Police [has] been taking an increasingly hostile attitude towards students" ("Heard Around Campus", The Amherst Student, Feb. 28). And while it's true that nobody should have to "coerce errant smokers towards a state of affairs acceptable to everyone," let's remember that these are our neighbors and classmates at the College, and that personal suggestions are often more powerful than either "forceful reminders" from the Student's Editorial Board or the enforcement of harsher "punitive measures" by our Campus Police.