No (cigarette) butts about it, there needs to be some progress already. If the Tobacco-Free Campus Task Force is planning on any success with the campuswide smoking ban that is supposed to go into effect seven months from now, they better get in gear on deciding how to implement the seemingly impossible injunction.

According to an April 8 Kernel article, the Tobacco-Free Campus Task Force met for the sixth time since UK has decided to go tobacco-free. However, there has not been any progress toward figuring out how to implement the rule.

Ellen Hahn, the co-chair of the task force, along with Anthany Beatty, the vice president for public safety, said this policy would be different from the rule that is supposed to keep students 20-feet from a building – an excellent model on how not to enforce a ban.

“This is different,” Hahn said in the article. “We’ve been given nine months to figure it out.”

Two months down, though, and there has been little to no progress.

Within the time that has passed, there have been no forums for the campus community to express their concerns or ideas. But the main goal for this ban is to help students, faculty and staff. Well, if that’s the case, the task force doesn’t have nine months to figure this out.

With summer break rapidly approaching —a mere three weeks away—the task force will quickly lose a large voice of those who are not on campus for those two months. So essentially they have five months, considering the two that are already down.

Hahn said in the article that she doesn’t see it as taking away any rights, but rather helping people.

“Rights issue doesn’t hold any water for me,” Hahn said. “If you don’t want to quit, that’s fine. But we have an ethical obligation to help them.”

The real, unrecognized obligation Hahn and the committee has to fulfill is getting the opinion of the campus. This project should not be another notch in Hahn’s health-belt, following making Lexington public buildings smoke-free.

Hahn said she knows there will be some resentment to the program, but considers herself an optimist. Jimmy Stanton, member of the task force and executive director of public relations at UK, said he knows the project will take a lot of time to develop and plan but will eventually end positively.

“It’s a large project, but a valuable one,” Stanton said in the article.

These are few opinions in a decision that will affect a lot of people. This committee must seek help from campus.