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GREENSBORO — Smoke 'em if you got 'em, High Point University students. This summer, your campus goes tobacco-free.

The change, announced Monday, will take effect Sept. 1. The school will begin the transition in June to help students, faculty and staff adjust to the new policy.

"We'll be offering smoking-cessation classes free of charge to everyone at the school," said Gail Tuttle, HPU's vice president for student life. "We want to support those who want to make this decision, to be healthier and improve their lives."

Tuttle said an online survey last year of more than 1,000 people living and working on campus showed 70 percent would favor a total ban of all tobacco products.

"We also did student forums on the issue and had an extensive dialogue about the change," Tuttle said. "The response was really overwhelming. Most of our students do live on campus and they want a clean, healthy environment here."

HPU will be the state's 21st institution of higher education to enact a ban and the largest in this area. Bennett College was the first in the state to ban smoking, and Greensboro College followed suit last year.

Under North Carolina law, all state buildings - including state school classroom and dormitory buildings - are smoke-free. In 2007 the legislature allowed schools to enact "smoke-free" zones of up to 100 feet around the buildings. UNC-Chapel Hill and Winston-Salem State University have used the 100-foot ban to make their campuses virtually smoke-free. N.C. A&T has designated outdoor smoking areas on its campus. At UNCG, the smoke-free zone extends 25 feet from buildings.

"We could have gone up to 100 feet out, but that wouldn't have covered the whole campus," said Mike Byers, UNCG assistant vice chancellor for business affairs. "We thought 25 feet was a good distance and it made it easier to tell where smoking was and wasn't allowed. What we didn't want was little pockets of people smoking all in one place.

"I believe that when the law allows us to change the policy beyond 100 feet to cover the whole campus, we'll revisit it," Byers said.

Contact Joe Killian at 373-7023 or joe.killian@news-record.com