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After Hours Program
There are a number of fun activities happening on
the NAU campus that are designed to enhance the
university experience while keeping our students safe.
The After Hours events are a great example. The After
Hours events are held on most Friday nights throughout
the year in the University Union from 9 pm to 1 am. They
offer for our student’s enjoyment carnival games, poker
nights, hypnotists, comedians and raffles. More than
12,000 NAU students attend the free events every year
for alcohol free fun and the chance to win prizes like
DVD players and complete Snow Bowl packages. In the
past, the NAU Parent’s Association contributed $5,000 to
the After Hours program. Unfortunately last year other
projects were given a higher priority by our Special
Projects committee and we ran out of money before we
were able to fund this activity. The loss of our $5,000
grant has created a large hole in their $100,000 budget.
Hopefully we can find another avenue to raise money for
this on going event. If anyone has any suggestions or
would like to make a contribution, please let us know.
You can reach us at parent.association@nau.edu.
This is a great program that all parents should be able
to put their support behind it and encourage their
students to attend. For more information about the
program go to http://www.nau.edu/afterhours/
or call 928-523-4313.
THE PROBLEM OF SMOKING ON COLLEGE
CAMPUSES
By
Gary Botello, Coconino
County
Tobacco Use Prevention
Project
All
across the country,
college students are lighting up at an alarming rate. In
a nationwide survey sent to 119 different colleges in
1999, nearly 30 percent of students said they were
current cigarette smokers, and roughly half had used
some form of tobacco (including cigars and smokeless
tobacco) in the last year.
These
figures are a significant jump from
1993,
when 22 percent of all college students smoked
cigarettes. And it's not just boredom: It's the
pervasive connection in our culture between smoking and
that ever-elusive quality, “cool”. In polls,
teens and twentysomethings invariably cite social status and "looking
cool" as the main reasons they started smoking. And,
according to the American Lung Association, the most
common situation in which young people first try a
cigarette is in the company of a friend who already
smokes.
Until recently,
if a person had reached the age of 18 without smoking,
the likelihood of them starting would be very
small.
Recent trends,
however, show an alarming number of students who were
smoke-free upon arriving at college are starting to
smoke after they arrive. Sadly, because nicotine is
a powerfully addicting drug, many of these
experimenters go on to become regular
smokers.
 “The
importance of the college years hasn't been lost on the
tobacco companies”,
says John Pierce, PhD, head of the Cancer Prevention and
Control Program at the
University
of California,
San
Diego.
"The industry has
been focusing heavily on getting its promotional
material to college students," he says. In some ways,
he stated, college students are
the perfect audience. They're old enough
to buy cigarettes but young enough to be highly
receptive to ads promoting a hip, fun
lifestyle”. The number of cigarette
advertisements in magazines and newspapers popular with
college students demonstrates this marketing push.
According to the Alternative Weekly Network, tobacco
industry advertising accounts for a whopping 70 percent of
the advertising revenue of alternative weekly
newspapers.
We
have found that these problems exist locally, at NAU, as
well.
In an NAU Tobacco Use Survey conducted in March,
2001,when students were asked, “Have you ever smoked
cigarettes?, 52% said that they have smoked
cigarettes.
.
Other results of the NAU
survey include:
¨
31%
of those questioned had smoked a cigar in their
lifetime.
¨
16%
have tried spit tobacco.
¨
¼ of
the tobacco users stated they will not be thinking about
quitting in the next 6
months.
¨
Nearly
1/3 are thinking about quitting, although not in the
next month.
¨
43%
have attempted to quit (10-19 times) and more than ½
attempted to quit 10 times or less in the last 12
months.
Some good news
to report is that as of Summer, 2004, all dorms on the
NAU Campus will be completely
smoke-free! | 
