Two and three decades ago, college students rebelled against the CIA visiting their campuses, seeking fresh recruits.

The recruitment wars are back, but this time with a contemporary new "villain": Philip Morris.

This week, while voters made their demands known at the polls, a small group of California State University, Sacramento, students issued their own outside the student union:

"Kick Philip Morris' Butt Off Our Campus!" read one protester's sign.

It was a small protest with big issues at stake for California students, universities, businesses - and, some would argue, for democracy itself.

Philip Morris was among 100 employers attending Tuesday's spring career fair at CSUS, which tries to hook students up with jobs. Inside the Union Ballroom, young people milled around booths, filling out applications, scooping up freebies and chatting with representatives from such diverse employers as Target, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, La-Z-Boy and the Drug Enforcement Administration.

But it was the presence of tobacco giant Philip Morris that infuriated members of STAND, or Students Taking Action Against Nicotine Dependence. Joined by local anti-tobacco groups, they took signs and cardboard coffins to the union, gathering signatures urging that tobacco companies be banned from campus.

Like the CIA before it, Philip Morris has met similar resistance at campuses nationwide - including the University of California, Berkeley, where activists held a noisy rally last year protesting the cigarette maker's recruitment efforts on that campus.

At CSUS, anti-smoking sentiments have been gaining momentum, said STAND President Jessica Gonzalez, a 21-year-old child-development major.

The CSUS Foundation, which runs the bookstore and provides food service, voted last year to rid its investment portfolio of all tobacco stocks. In August, the university stopped selling tobacco products on campus.

"It's kind of a slap in the face to have Philip Morris on campus when students have said they don't want them here in any form," said Gonzalez, pointing to the more than 1,000 signature cards collected last year objecting to Philip Morris' job-fair participation.

Others weren't buying the protest.

"Hey, they offered me a job, man!" shouted one student, passing protesters. He declined to give his name, but did say he was a smoker who would gladly work for Philip Morris, with whom he had just applied. "We're old enough to make choices," he said.

That's been the position of the CSUS Career Center, which puts on job fairs three times a year. Director Marilyn K. Albert explained that Philip Morris meets the university's criteria for inclusion, which states that employers must have legitimate, career-track jobs requiring a college degree, and that applicants don't need to buy anything.

Gallo, for instance, attended this year, she said, as have the FBI and CIA in the past. "So where do you draw the line?" she asked, noting that Philip Morris hired two graduates last year.

Brendan McCormick, a Philip Morris spokesman in Richmond, Va., said that campus recruitment is "a common practice for us, just as it is for other corporations."

McCormick cautioned that many student protesters relay "inaccurate" information about the company's business practices. Booting Philip Morris off campus, he said, "doesn't address the issues and doesn't promote a free discussion of ideas."

The First Amendment argument was similarly raised in the 1980s, when students tried to ban CIA recruiters.

Philip Morris refrained from handing out product samples Tuesday, but campus officials have seized what they deem the ultimate "teachable moment." They have tossed the matter right back to the students, asking them to devise what they consider to be fair criteria for job-fair employers.

The students, who gathered more than 600 new signatures of protest, readily agreed. One possible approach, said a local activist, is to model guidelines after those used by socially responsible mutual funds.

"The fact that they're going to be including us - and even taking into consideration our concerns - is a huge victory for us," said Gonzalez. "We feel like our message was heard."