As many of you already know, having an electric board or scooter is prominent on the campus of High Point University. They can be practically essential to a lot of students that do not have a car on campus or otherwise. For others, no other method of transportation can beat an electric vehicle's convenience. Many students are required to take 7:50 course sections and an electric board/scooter is the most convenient transportation to eating a meal at Slane and to getting to their classes on schedule. All in all, a great amount of High Point University students need a quick and easy form of transportation without having to worry about finding available parking spots or depending on the university shuttles.

Getting rid of this method of transportation greatly increases the use of the shuttle system when it is already struggling to keep up with the student body's demands. When riding the university shuttles, they are most frequently delayed by 20-45 minutes. For busy students that often have plans that run on tight schedules, this is impractical and impedes us from getting to our destination. One example of this is the athletic students. The athletic students generally ride electric transportation because of their tight schedules between classes and practice. The purpose is that driving a personal vehicle takes too long to park, get to class and practice. Riding on the shuttles also hinders schedules for the students.

I strongly believe that removing electric vehicles from our campus will only hurt students that use them and make it exceedingly more challenging to get from one place to another, especially students that commute from the other parts of the campus to the main campus. Safety is a major concern for the campus administration, and rightfully so. However, very few riders have actually gotten into any kind of accident with a car. As someone who rides an electric longboard to get around campus, I understand that it is completely my responsibility to ride safely and to always be cautious when riding. This is especially important when there is traffic on campus; most electric boards have a top speed of 20-25 mph and electric scooters have a top speed of 15-20 mph. This fits directly within the campus speed limit, and if campus driving laws fall under the same rules and jurisdiction of NC driving laws, cars should have to share the road with these vehicles. I petition that instead of banning electric vehicles from campus, the administration should propose a different plan to raise awareness for safety on the roads.