A study of why the students of Singapore Polytechnic smoke in the campus despite knowing the laws restrict so.

Title
A study of why the students of Singapore Polytechnic smoke in the campus despite knowing the laws restrict so.

Done by: (Webmaster: The identities of the researchers are protected due to the sensitivity of this study. They are a brave lot. Salute them!)

Aim of Study
The aim of the study is to answer the main research question below:
· Why do students smoke in campus when they clearly know it is against the campus laws?

This main research questions is fragmented into the following sub-questions:
· What are the consequences of smoking in Singapore Polytechnic? What do you think of the consequences?
· Where in the campus do students usually smoke at? What are their behaviours when smoking in the campus? Why?
· How far to an extent would students go just to be able to smoke?


Data Collection and Analysis Methods
This study employs a qualitative social-psychological research paradigm. This research was conducted in Singapore Polytechnic, taking a total of eight weeks (30th May 2008 to 25th July 2008) to complete.

The form of data collection for this research is as follows:
Student Interviewers; by coming up with interview questions to interview selected students of Singapore Polytechnic. An example of the interview questions is shown in the Appendix.

The form of analysis is used as follows:
Open Coding.

Findings
The Common Areas
The common spots disclosed by the interviewees who smoke are toilets. This fact can be tallied by the interviewees who do not smoke by the encounters with toilets which reek of the smell of cigarette smoke. Other places disclosed as a common smoking area include the deserted basement of Foot Court 5. There are other interviewees who refrained from disclosing their common smoking spots.

Reasons why the students smoke in the campus
• Inability to resist the temptations to smoke
They cannot resist the temptations to smoke as the people around them to smoke. This usually implies to heavy smokers who would consistently walk out of the class to smoke in order for them to stay focus and pay attention during lessons. They become too dependent on the cigarettes to listen in class.

• Influence of friends
Friends do play an important part for students who choose to smoke in school. It is usually when an individual who smokes, ask his friends to go along with him/her to smoke. It ends up having more people who smoke as some of these students who smoke in campus are social smokers. They main intention is to accompany their friends. And it is when their friends who smoke offer them a cigarette that they all end up smoking.

• Find it far to walk out of school
Some feel that walking out of school to catch a puff is a hassle. They find the distance traveled is far and they are lazy to do so. They would rather smoke in school as it is more convenient to do so.
• Secluded areas in school
There are certain areas in the school where most smokers would go too. They do so as they realised that very seldom do school staffs walk pass there and there is no one to watch them. Since this is the case, they would stay there to smoke. These areas do not have any sensors or staff to catch them smoking as it is a more secluded area with very little or even no crowd at all.

How the non-smokers in the campus feel about the issue

In this study, it is shown that most of the non-smokers are affected by the smokers. They think that smoking is not only unhealthy but also a waste of money and time. They do not want to spend such amount of money and in the end, they are killing themselves. There are some non-smokers who think that smoking only shows those smokers are immature and it is not as cool as what they think. However, there are still some non-smokers who fully understand why smokers smoke.

Non-smoking students who have been interviewed are generally affected by this smoking issue. They seem to be concerned about their surroundings and the atmosphere of the place they are in. With this, we can see why some of these students are against students who smoke within the campus. Students who do not smoke tend to have a negative outlook on students who smoke within the campus; some to the extent that they hate the people who smoke within the campus.

Non-smokers are affected mostly by smelling the smokes. As we all know, passive smoking kills twice as fast as smoking itself. Non-smokers feel that is it very irritated but they cannot change the situation. Therefore, majority of them choose not to care about it and just try not to walk pass those people who are smoking. They do not think there is a point to stop the smokers or report to someone unless he/she is related to them.

We can definitely say that some students are biased towards smokers and they tend to ‘hate’ them more due to the fact that they still smoke within the campus even though it is against the school rules. Therefore, non-smokers are generally affected by this issue due to them being uncomfortable with having students who smoke within the campus itself.

Non-smokers feel that this is a rather big issue and that the school should implement harsher punishments to students who smoke within the campus. With this, it shows that majority of the non-smokers are really against students who smoke and that they are willing to share their opinions in order to eliminate students who smoke within the campus. This also shows that they are concerned about this issue and are in a way affected by the actions of smokers.

Suggestions to resolve the issue
From our survey respondents, they think that having fines and punishment is not enough to solve the smoking issue in our campus. Furthermore, our school security is not possible to cover the entire Singapore Polytechnic with such a low numbers.

The following some of the more prominent recommendations that respondents have in accordance to what smoking issue inside Singapore Polytechnic’s campus:

1) Smoke detector
With reference to the findings in the survey done by our student researchers, a number of respondents indicated that the school can take steps and insert smoke detectors at every corner of the school. For example, these smoke detectors should be placed at “hot spots” whereby most of the time smokers will visit to take a puff and think that they will not get caught as the area is dark, secluded or hard to access. These smoke detectors work in the way such that they will let a sounding alarm whenever the detector senses any traces of cigarette’s smoke around it, whenever the alarm is sounded, there will be a security breach light that lights up at the campus’s security post. The benefits of smoke detectors are as follows:

The alarm will be able to frighten off the smokers.
Secondly, the school will be able to catch those groups of smokers.

2) Increase fines
Many of the respondents think that the fines are not pricey enough and the smokers are not afraid of the small amount of fine as they do not feel the pinch on their fingers. Respondents recommend that the school should increase our fines to a minimum of $5000. Firstly, this huge amount should be able to let the smokers feel the pinch on their fingers. And secondly, the parents would not be able to pay for them. With the fines increases to a minimum of $5000, it would be able to stop those smokers.