GORHAM – If you overlook the “No smoking beyond this point” sign outside Harlan A. Philippi Hall, you won’t miss the “No Smoking” signs on light posts leading up to the dormitory.

But if you do, the signs at the dorm’s entrance – “This is a smoke-free building” – are hard to ignore.

The University of Southern Maine in September banned smoking in its dorms, forcing smokers to trek at least 50 feet away from the buildings to light up.

Next fall, they’ll have to go even farther. That’s when smoking will be outlawed across campus – indoors and out – except in designated smoking areas. Rather than tell people where they can’t smoke, the university will dictate where they can.

USM is among the growing number of colleges and universities that are finding new ways to restrict smoking on campus. The policy at USM, which has 11,000 students on campuses in Gorham and Portland, will be one of the strictest in the nation.

Pamela Clay-Storm, a USM nurse and former head of a task force that created the rules, said policy makers the past 15 years have focused on workplaces, restaurants and other places to restrict smoking.

College campuses, for the most part, were ignored until recently.

“The work of the public health sector is finally edging its way onto campuses,” Clay-Storm said.

Some question whether the new policies are fair or enforceable. Standing outside a USM classroom building in subfreezing temperatures, Michael Toch, a 23-year-old theater major, takes a cigarette break during a class on makeup.

Next year, he will be banished to a yet-to-be-determined spot – an outlying parking lot, perhaps – to smoke.

“Maybe the pendulum has swung too far the other way,” Toch said.

Twenty-three percent of Americans smoked in 2000, down from 25 percent in 1990 and 33 percent in 1980, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

It’s a different story on campus. According to a Harvard School of Public Health study, 29 percent of college students smoked in 1999, a 28 percent jump since 1993. Henry Wechsler, the lead researcher in the study, blames the increase on tobacco marketing in the 1990s. “This was the Joe Camel generation arriving at college,” he said.

The Harvard study was a wake-up call for many schools. Other than religious institutions, colleges and universities had few rules to restrict smoking.

Nowadays, most schools ban smoking in indoor public areas, and many have banned or restricted smoking in dormitories and even stadiums. Some have outlawed tobacco sales and advertising on campus, or divested themselves of investments in tobacco companies.

A handful have created designated smoking areas – a significant change from the usual no-smoking areas. In California, the smoking areas at Cabrillo College and San Joaquin Delta College are in corners of outlying parking lots. The New Hampshire Technical Institute restricts smoking to five gazebos it built across its 240 acres. Smoking outdoors at the University of Maine at Fort Kent is restricted to a smoking gazebo; the school still allows smoking in some dorm rooms.

A panel last spring proposed making the University of Southern Maine totally smoke-free. But in a referendum, students opposed the plan 60 percent to 40 percent, and in the end the USM president approved the plan with designated smoking areas.

Tyler Stanley, a senior and a member of the Student Senate, said some students think the new policies are Draconian, and are being pushed by anti-smoking zealots. He thinks further restrictions are unnecessary. “I don’t think it’s the university’s job to tell people they can’t smoke,” he said.

Marc Hiller, a professor of health management and policy at the University of New Hampshire, a national leader for its sweeping smoking restrictions, cautioned that designated smoking areas can create the perception that smoking is more prevalent, and therefore more accepted, than it really it is.

Such areas also can unfairly turn smokers into pariahs, said Robert Dana, dean of students at the University of Maine’s flagship campus in Orono. “I’m all for restricting smoking,” he said. “But I also want to be cautious and not ostracize or criticize smokers or put a big red S on their chests.”