BERKELEY, Calif. – Events of this morning marked a step forward for campus safety and a step backwards for those who refuse to walk actual steps. In an unanimous vote by the Chancellor’s Cabinet, the University moved to place a ban on the use of electric skateboards and scooters on campus.
“Due to an abundance of excessively annoying vibes, and incidents of lesser importance like civilian deaths, use of the following is henceforth banned on campus: electric skateboards, scooters, and any human-operated vehicle that travels at a velocity only appropriate for the German Autobahn,” the Chancellor’s Office announced in their official statement.
Sources reveal an increasingly reckless culture brewing amongst electric vehicle users. Evidence takes many forms – one piece was a set of text messages from the current president of Cal’s “No Electric Riders Deterred (NERD),” the electric skateboard club.
“You wanna boost? I’ve got a boost. But: not everyone gets to be boosted. Look, I don’t care that you’re walking in front of me as any normal human would do. Sure, people have actually been harmed in boosted accidents. But if I happen to run you over and turn you into Flat Stanley next to Doe Library, that’s the price you pay for the fact that I have to get to my CS61B lecture ten minutes early. It’s on you. And I have to do what I have to do,” read his texts with a fellow NERD member.
According to the office of the Chancellor, the ban comes after months of complaints of electric skateboarders inciting terror while traveling at dangerously high speeds – and even pushing the sound barrier. While many reports cite general dangerousness, a majority contain “annoying,” “incredibly annoying,” or “so fucking annoying,” with a single report claiming the people riding boosted boards too fast through walkways “expertly define what it means to be an annoying human being.”
Physics student Kane Western suffered a boosted board accident last week and is still nursing injuries.
“You’d think these things have a terminal velocity. Everything has a terminal velocity,” said Western. “But they don’t. And skateboards aren’t supposed to go uphill. I swear to god they defy every known law of classical physics. On top of that, once that motherfucker ran me over, I couldn’t even speak my mind because they were already 100 feet past me. It’s so fucking annoying. Physically annoying. Socially annoying on a fundamental, spiritual level of human existence. I read once that one of Newton’s fundamental laws denotes a physical limit on how annoying a person can be – the boosted boarders of Berkeley exceed it.”