Dear Editor,
I read with interest the article in Tuesday’s Daily Universe about the banning of scooters from campus. I cannot understand the reasoning behind this decision.
Lt. Greg Barber is noted to say that one factor considered in the ban was that scooters “travel at speeds greater than the pedestrian population … and have limited control to turn or stop …” The same thing can be said of bicycles (which, by the way, can travel much faster than scooters), and yet they are allowed. This argument is therefore invalid and flawed. Next the University Police are quoted as saying that scooters have damaged “sidewalks, benches, railings, … building carpets and doorways.” I have been around campus for a week or so and have not seen any of these damages. I invite the University Police to give the students specific examples of these yet unseen damages, and to tell us how they proved that scooters in fact caused them.
I do not want the university to think that I am accusing it of lying; I simply do not believe that the students are getting the whole story. Again, I say this because I do not see any of the concerns being raised against scooters as being valid or defensible. I do not own a scooter, but I know people that do, and that have ridden them to campus in the past. I feel that I can say with some degree of certainty that no university official desires to ride scooters to work, so this is only affecting the student body. Were we ever consulted during the decision making process? I know that I personally have no fear of being hurt in a scooter-pedestrian accident, and I do not think many other people do, either. Please rethink this decision, or at least give us reasons for the ban that make sense.
Jeremy B. Fisher
Sandy City, Salt Lake County
