For Michelle M. Durocher, a library assistant in the cataloging department, the ban on smoking in public places signaled a pivotal shift in the smoking culture on campus.
“I remember this vague sense of smoke in the building all the time,” she said of Widener Library. “It’s never really gone.”
She and a few colleagues achieved a “big victory”: a tiny, closet-sized non-smoking staff room. Durocher would thread her way through tables in the big, smoking staff room holding her breath to get to the closet.
Durocher did not have to hold her breath for much longer.
As in Adams House and elsewhere in the College, the smoking and non-smoking spaces ultimately switched.
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—Staff writer Radhika Jain can be reached at radhikajain@college.harvard.edu.