Written By: Marquez Slaughter

Campus Wellness has followed up on the tobacco ban on VSU’s campus by providing a program for VSU faculty, staff and students who use tobacco products and are willing to quit.

This program is called Freshstart, which is a free smoking cessation program of the American Cancer Society.

The Freshstart program provides two series throughout the Fall 2014 semester.  The first series has sessions held on Oct. 6, Oct. 13, Oct. 20, and Oct. 27 from 3:45 to 4:45 p.m. on the third floor of the Student Union in Conference Room 2.  The second series of sessions is held on Nov. 5, Nov. 12, Nov. 19, and Dec. 3 from 12 to 1 p.m. in Conference Room 1.

The sessions consist of four one-hour group sessions, which consist of individual attention, strategies and information, review and discussion, and assignments.  The objective of the sessions are to understand why one smokes and how it affects that person, as well as his or her surroundings; to go the first few days without cigarettes; to acquire that one will not go back to cigarettes, and to stay away from cigarettes.

Trained facilitators, Tim Yorkey and Mark Williams, help run the meetings and track the average number of cigarettes each participant smokes prior to each session.

“Unfortunately, we have had very little participation in the program,” said Rebecca Murphy, associate director of HR for employee and organizational development. “I don’t know how much of it is lack of desire to quit or challenges with promoting the programs existence or timing of classes.”

Campus Wellness encourages whether the tobacco user has already attempted to quit before. Anyone who would like to quit smoking to participate.