When a committee of City College faculty met to decide the fate of student smokers on campus, students’ rights went up in smoke.

Representatives from the Health and Wellness Center, security department, facilities and vice president of business services Joe Sullivan got together over the summer and removed eight of the 12 designated smoking areas on our campus. None of these people are cigarette smokers or students.

No one can really deny the research that suggests smoking is bad for a person’s health. And non-smokers may enjoy these areas of school where they no longer walk through clouds of smoke.

But the decision to herd smokers into fewer sections and discriminate against student smokers, without any smokers or students present, is against this college’s spirit of shared governance.

It’s unethical. It’s shady. It’s something students should start getting mad about, considering it’s not the first time they’ve ignored us.

Over winter break last year, management and the Board of Trustees met to discuss student pay cuts. We returned for spring semester and learned our paychecks would be smaller.

Sullivan was put on the spot for not including the Student Senate in a decision that directly influenced us. Now, this was the second meeting held over a break, in which students’ voices were not represented.

We’ve been put in our place.

Student smokers should have just as many rights as any other student on campus, and we need to stop bowing our heads and start looking these policy makers in the eye.

The first to do this should be Associated Student Senate president Emily Harrington.

When questioned about the issue, she responded with the words “my personal opinion” and “myself,” rather than the appropriate “students on campus,” or something that more clearly speaks for all the students she represents.

But what should we expect from a 16-year-old who can’t even buy a pack yet? These responses suggest our student representation is uncaring and unfair.

Harrington should speak for smokers and non-smokers alike, representing our entire student population equally.

If students had been a part of the decision on what to do with the $5,000 grant given by the Tobacco Settlement Program, maybe we would have put it towards something else, such as posting signs in smoking areas that display the harmful truths of tobacco, or providing more quitting gum and nicotine patches in the Health and Wellness Center.

Helping smokers quit instead of sectioning them off.

Representing the student body as a whole, rather than segregating into habits.

Smoking or not, hopefully these acts of discrimination will spark some call for representation.