This whole to-do over banning smoking at BU is really getting my goat. People need to chill out and stop trying to legislate all of their opinions.

I don’t like that shirt you’re wearing, but you don’t see me lobbying BU to ban ugly outerwear. This is an example of how one can hold a belief or preference without forcing on the general public. You have the right to make your house a smoke-free zone. You have the right to get pissed off if someone lights up in the non-smoking section of a restaurant. But when it comes to objecting to there being smokers in the great outdoors, you have the right to shut up and get on with your life.

I personally do not smoke. Most of my friends don’t smoke. I don’t especially like or endorse smoking, but then it is hard to endorse paying a faceless corporation $5 a day to give you cancer.

What I do endorse, however, is every human being’s right to be stupid in his or her own way. Eating fatty food is terrible for you, but if you just can’t stop putting butter on things, I am not going to harass you for it, even if the smell of double-salted deep fried lard does make me a little nauseous. As long as you are not forcing it down my throat, you can put whatever you want into your own body.

Now here is the part where you anti-smokers say “but second-hand smoke is deadly.” Well now, that is pretty easily dealt with, isn’t it? How’s this: move. If you have all of the great outdoors in which to move around, and you can’t find the energy to move away when someone fires up a smoke next to you, then go to the gym for God’s sake because you are obviously a sedentary human.

This smoking thing has even brought about the greatest abomination I have seen during my time at BU: students agreeing with Chancellor Silber. Silber thinks we sweet little students don’t have the ability to ask that our roommate stop having wild monkey sex while we try to study. Apparently, there are those among the student body who think we are equally unlikely to be able to tell that inconsiderate roommate we would prefer they not fill our room with a rich, tar-filled cloud of tobacco. Grow up, people. If you are so dumb or timid that you can’t ask your roommate to please take his butt down to the smoking lounge, you deserve every cancer-carrying breath of that second-hand smoke.

The one conciliation in this whole annoying debate is that it is a sure sign life is good here at BU. If people have the time to complain about cigarette smoke this much, then there must be very few issues of importance on campus. We are fortunate to not have to deal with issues like, say, out dated guest policies, homosexual discrimination or the need for rape crisis centers. This way we can focus all our energy on fighting to take away each other’s freedoms one by one.