No butts about it — beginning next fall, students won’t be allowed to smoke in any on-campus residence halls.

Currently, 13 out of the 26 residence halls on campus permit smoking inside rooms. Another 25 buildings, Garden and Circle Apartments also allow smoking indoors.

“We’ve been moving in this direction for quite some time,” said Bonnie Prunty, director of the Office of Residential Life and Judicial Affairs. “For several years, we’ve been increasing the number of non-smoking dorms due to parent and student complaints about second-hand smoke.”

This all-inclusive policy for the college is a drastic change from four years ago. As recently as 2001, the college had smoke-free housing options available for only 58 students, according to an article in The Ithacan.

A 2001 study by the Harvard School of Public Health found that 27 percent of college campuses have banned smoking in residence halls nationwide.

Prunty, who announced the change on Wednesday to the Residence Hall Association, said a loophole in New York state’s Clean Air Act allows residence halls to be smoking-optional, even though they are public buildings. However, there is pending legislation in the New York state Assembly and Senate that may amend this law to include residence halls, giving another reason for the college to make the change, Prunty said.

Prunty said fires are one consequence of smoking in residence halls. She cited a fire in Emerson Hall last year caused by an improperly extinguished cigarette as an example. She added that rooms inhabited by smokers are harder to refurbish — the residue and the smell are difficult to remove. But Prunty said the health of all students was the real reason motivating the change.

“At this point, in order to support [smokers’] interests in the buildings, it negatively affects other people who it also poses a health risk to,” Prunty said.

She said narcotics enforcement was not a factor in the decision. “Certainly, if marijuana use goes down in our residence halls, that will be a positive benefit, but it’s not motivating the change,” she said. “Marijuana smokers are already violating policy.”

Junior Alexander Moore, president of the Residence Hall Association, said the decision to move to a smoke-free campus had been coming for a while but may have ignored smokers’ voices.

“We have to realize that smokers are people too,” he said. “I don’t think smokers should be pushed out of buildings, and I think the college should make it possible to have their voices heard.”

Freshman Rhea Hanrahan lives in Hood Hall, the substance-free dorm. She said she couldn’t stand the smell of smoke.

“I’m not entirely against having smoking dorms, but I know that there are some people who live in [smoking dorms] and don’t have a choice,” she said. “I’d be upset if I was forced to live in a smoking dorm, and I had put down on my application that I didn’t want to.”