A BBC article about chewing betel nut takes me back three decades to when the DrsC were visiting faculty at the University of Guam. Our students from Guam didn't tend to chew, but the kids from the out islands of Micronesia - CNMI, FSM, Palau, or the Marshalls - often did.
You'd see them carrying to class an empty soda can into which to spit. Our old buildings were two story with an open deck being the access to the upstairs classrooms. Between classes chewers tended to spit over the side and, quite unintentionally, "decorate" the head and shoulders of students or faculty walking out of classrooms below.
To forestall this practice, there were signs forbidding spitting attached to palm trunks at 2nd floor eye level next to the deck. Out-island kids resented these signs, seeing them as a sign of discrimination directed against them. These were the same youngsters whose toes were so splayed from going barefoot that rubber flip-flops were the only footwear they could possibly wear.
From whatever island, our UOG students were a nice group, polite and respectful. Their attitudes toward professors were more Asian than American, very easy to like.
The campus is today labeled a tobacco and betel free zone. The old, tropical-style buildings have been replaced with modern, enclosed air conditioned ones - more comfortable but less picturesque.
