Loophole Allows City To Rescue College Smokers
Mar 25, 2009 12:10 - 2 Comments
While the fence at the border of Princeton Place and Montgomery College will not open anytime soon, at least Montgomery College students who smoke now have a place to light up without standing in the middle of Rockville Pike. This had been, as many Rockville Central readers know, an issue.
It turns out that the College’s fence extends beyond its actual borders — so that a small corner of land is actually City property. Says The Gazette:
City officials agreed last week to allow the college to use a piece of land technically owned by the city, but enclosed by the college’s fence for the past 40 years.“It should be made very clear, the city is providing our land to help reach this solution,” Mayor Susan R. Hoffmann said at Monday’s City Council meeting. “It’s the right thing to do in this case, but we certainly didn’t have to do it. The city’s being particularly generous in helping come to a solution to a problem that was not created by the city.”
I personally view the College’s zero-leeway smoking ban on campus to be ill advised, arrogant, and overly maternal. However, there is little the surrounding community can do to influence them to make changes — there is little leverage and many other campuses are going in the same direction. So this discovery of City land right where it needs to be is highly fortuitous and it’s a wonderful move by the City to make it available.
The next step, for many residents, is to repoen the fence that has been closed, to allow pedestrians and cyclists easier access through College property. This is on a go-slow track, because there are fears that once it’s reopened, smokers will go back to hanging out on Princeton Place instead of the sanctioned area.
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Why has the college been fencing in city property for 40 years?
I’m far more confused about the college fencing in any property in the first place. What is it trying to accomplish? Is it there to keep the students in or the public out? I never saw any college campuses fenced in like that when I was in the Midwest.