A Long Beach City Council decision has given Cal State Long Beach the right to create its own skateboarding policy.
Before the city council’s decision, skateboarding on campus was governed by the city’s municipal code.
According to CSULB Vice President of Administration and Finance Mary Stephens, a tentative skateboarding policy is currently being worked out.
“We really don’t want to cite our students,” Stephens said. “We just want to be a safe campus for everybody.”
Stephens said the skateboarding policy would include capping the speed of skateboarders at 5 mph and banning it in areas of heavy pedestrian traffic.
The Long Beach City Council’s decision to give CSULB power over its skateboarding policy is long overdue.
The campus should have had this power in the first place.
On campus, skateboarding is primarily used as a mode of transportation. Changing the policy to assist students who depend on skateboards to get to class on time is much-needed.
While the new policy is being hashed out by university officials, there are some things we think the policy should address.
First, we’d like to see the university clearly define where students can skate on campus by posting signs in these areas.
Before the city council gave power to CSULB, university officials had already planned to label skate zones and pedestrian-only zones. These zones should ensure that skateboarders do not interrupt the flow of pedestrian foot traffic in highly congested areas, like the University Bookstore and Brotman Hall.
Using signs to physically define these pedestrian-only zones for all students would help skateboarders to avoid being cited.
In addition, we’d like to see administrators clearly define and enforce the penalties that will be given to students who disobey the new policy.
In the past, we saw inconsistency in the enforcement of the municipal city code. Some skateboarders were stopped by police while others received no warning at all.
For the new policy to be effective, we feel it should be enforced equally at all times.
Additionally, students should know how they would be penalized for violating the new policy on campus, whether it be through a warning or a fine.
This policy should be created to accommodate all students, skateboarders and pedestrians alike. Let’s allow skateboarding on campus and avoid pedestrian roadkill.
People who skateboard and use their bikes around campus need to get around campus too and so far I haven’t seen an established skate zones at all. This suggestion to “keep people safe” is understandable, yes, but if and only if there is heavy foot traffic. There are a lot of factors that whoever proposed this idea in the first place hasn’t taken into account. Does this new “tentative” policy take affect 24/7? Taking into consideration that our campus is on a slope, does this affect people who bike or skate uphill? I got stopped today while going UPHILL – which was definitely less than 5 mph by the way – with only a warning not to skateboard again in the pedestrian zone but there was no traffic and I asked how much would the citation be if I didn’t stop, the officer proceeded, “$225.” Is that really a reasonable or even logical price to pay? That’s almost the price of 5 parking citations, an annual parking permit, or even half a Playstation 4 or Xbox One. I looked at the pedestrian zones and its basically all off upper campus. The only possible “skate zone” up there would be the east campus drive route but there is no sidewalk reasonable for skating or biking and it’s WAY too steep. I just want this policy to be more reasonable because it all just seems more like outright restricting non-pedestrian methods of transportation.