Tuesday, September 5, 2006
Casey Millstein is tired of being pulled over by campus police and she’s out to change an ordinance that makes it illegal to skateboard on campus.
Millstein, Baldwin senior, is a longboarder and has been riding her longboard on campus since her freshman year.
“Gas is expensive and I’m just using it as a mode of transportation,” said Millstein. “And yet the cops keep pulling me over.”
Photo by Lisa Lipovac
Baldwin senior Casey Millstein, Glenview, Illinois senior Ashley Rinella Lawrence senior Eric Dobbins are working to eliminate the ban that prevents people from longboarding on campus. The students believe that longboards are used as a mode of transportation and not for sport and should be permitted.
Since August 1987, with the most recent amendment in July 1996, the city of Lawrence has prohibited skateboards from certain public areas including the University of Kansas campus along Jayhawk Boulevard. The restricted area stretches from West Campus Road to 13th Street and includes 1,000 feet on either side of the street.
In the past two years, Millstein said she was stopped seven times by police for ignoring the signs saying “NO SKATEBOARDING.”
“They’ve threatened to take our boards away,” said Millstein, as she and her two friends and fellow boarders Eric Dobbins and Ashley Rinella skated Monday morning along Jayhawk Boulevard. “They treat us like we’re 13-year-old punks.”
But Millstein is frustrated because the longboard she chooses to ride is not a skateboard in her opinion.
According to urbandictionary.com, a longboard is different from a regular skateboard because it can be designed for speedboarding, transportation, slalom, carving, sliding, boardwalking and racing of any other kind.
Eric Dobbins, Lawrence senior, said that longboards were not intended for the type of tricks that caused property damage or injury.
“You can’t jump or do many tricks on a longboard, they’re too heavy,” Dobbins said. This is because of the boards larger wheels and the elevated trucks, which are the axil-like structures that attach the wheels to the board, he said.
Capt. Schuyler Bailey of the KU Public Safety Office said the current ordinance did not exempt longboards from the skateboarding ban. He said that any person on a skateboard or similar equipment could be stopped and given a citation.
“It is a violation of city ordinance,” said Bailey. “Based on the history, there has been damage and we’ve had people who have been injured.”
Millstein said she talked with Casey Topol, student senator and Mamaroneck, N.Y., senior, about the issue. Topol said that because the skateboard ban was a city ordinance the issue couldn’t be directly solved by Student Senate.
“If students wish to file a petition with the city council, Student Senate would be willing to support it,” Topol said.
Millstein and her friends remain undeterred and said they would continue working to raise awareness of the issue and to make longboarding as acceptable on campus as it is at other universities in California and Montana.
“All I want to be able to do is cruise down Jayhawk Boulevard on a beautiful Sunday morning,” said Millstein.
Dobbins said that his longboard helped him get to class on time and that it was much easier than riding a bicycle, which he said he had never learned to ride.
“I’d do it topless,” Dobbins said. “I’ve got nothing to loose except my board.”
Kansan staff writer Ben Smith can be contacted at bsmith@kansan.com.
— Edited by Nicole Kelley
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