After years of struggling with skateboarding policy, a vote on Tuesday by the Long Beach City Council has now given Cal State Long Beach the authority to set its own skateboarding regulations rather than follow a city ordinance.
A section of the Long Beach Municipal Code, a local statute that prohibited skateboarding on campus, was amended to allow CSULB to set its own rules.
Deputy City Manager Tom Modica said the council voted to “remove all restrictions in [the] municipal code” on skateboarding and to defer to CSULB “who has the authority to create their own regulations.”
Mary Stephens, CSULB’s vice president of administration and finance, said that a tentative policy is being put together that would cap skateboarders at 5 mph and ban skateboarding in areas with heavy foot traffic.
Stephens said that campus police officers have been asked not to ticket or cite anyone riding a skateboard unless they are being unsafe.
“We really don’t want to cite our students,” she said. “We just want to be a safe campus for everybody.”
Stephens said that the university views skateboards as a form sustainable transportation, not as toys.
“We recognize that skateboards are now a form of transportation,” Stephens said. “We want to include them into our campus in a way that is safe and so that everyone enjoys the campus.”
Although skateboarding on campus will not violate a Long Beach City ordinance, Stephens said that University Police can still cite students under Cal State University policy and regulations.
Stephens said that the university is working with Associated Students Inc. and student groups to form a campus-wide skateboarding policy, which she says could go into effect on Jan. 1.
Dean of Students Jeff Klaus said that he sent information about skateboarding on campus to City Council Members Gary DeLong and Long Beach Vice Mayor Robert Garcia, who then took over handling the issue.
“We have very supportive council members, and they were more than willing to work with us and help us out,” Klaus said.
James Johnson, District 7 councilman and CSULB College of Business Administration professor, said that CSULB is better suited to set on-campus skateboarding regulations than the city because it understands the issue better.
“[CSULB] should make their rules because they know their campus more than we do as a city,” Johnson said. “We trust that [CSULB] will make the rules that they think, as administrators, will keep everyone safe on campus, including pedestrians, as well as skateboarders.”
Although skateboarding on campus has been illegal for years, the university has tried making changes to the policy so that students could use their skateboards as transportation.
“We’ll see over time if [CSULB] can have skateboarding on campus in a way that’s safe and allows for the respect for all kinds of people,” Johnson said.
If not, he said, CSULB can ban skateboarding on campus in the future.