Join my petition to ban fragrance-wearing on campus

Written by Nathan Hansen Friday, 22 January 2010 08:00

It seems inevitable and official that smoking outdoors and 50 feet from any building on campus is soon to be against the rules. The faculty and staff senate have voted yes on the smoking ban, and it is only a matter of time before it goes into effect.

Student government, the Wellness Center and the College of Pharmacy used propaganda like the tobacco-free campus Web site effectively to curtail a lifestyle choice that for the most part does not affect the general student population.

So I am here today to ask for a similar ban on the wearing of perfume, cologne, deodorant and other similar personal hygiene products by the student body while on campus.

These products are just as harmful to the students who wear them and innocent bystanders as secondhand smoke, and should not be tolerated on such an illiberal campus as this. If California can ban fatty foods in restaurants, we can ban personal hygiene products on campus in order to protect ourselves from each other.

Don’t believe me that products like perfume and cologne are harmful to the user and others? There are several government and non-profit studies that show that perfumes and colognes have hazardous effects on the lungs, immune systems, and brains of the those that wear them and those that breathe in the fumes from these products.

Most colognes and perfumes and deodorants are made from heavy metals and petroleum products. Wearing these products is like spraying yourself with gasoline or lead and affects you and everyone around you.

And unlike smoking, you can wear perfume indoors where people cannot get away from you and the awful stench and fumes that emit from you. Asthmatics have just as much trouble breathing perfume fumes as they do breathing smoke from cigarettes.

Never mind that just like secondhand smoke there is no scientific evidence that perfume fumes cause problems in others – there is just scientific evidence of a correlation. Or the fact that even in the long run the amount of smoke or perfume the average person is exposed to is a minute amount, especially when it comes to smokers outdoors.

We have a responsibility as a society to tell people how to live and to shun them if they don’t conform to our standards of health and lifestyle choices. We have to ban the wearing of perfume and colognes right now, or else everyone on campus someday could end up with cancer or brain disease!

And while we are at it, let’s ban grilled foods, internal combustion engines, cell phones, and that evil coal plant that are all on campus. If there is even the remotest possibility of harm to yourself or others, than you have the freedom to make the choice of whether or not to use that product.

Nathan is a senior studying mathematics.