Will UNM ban hoverboards on campus?

Junior Rebecca Taylor supports the university’s ban on hoverboards but understands why some students could be upset with the ban.

After banning hoverboards from dorms in December, officials at the University of Hartford in CT are now considering a full ban because of concerns over how to store them safely, said David Isgu, a school spokesman.

Other universities nationally that have banned hoverboards in some capacity include the University of Northern Iowa, University of Colorado-Boulder, George Washington University, Louisiana State University, and University of Arkansas. And the statistics have shown we’re going to have a fire with one of these things.

“We were starting to see a lot of information about hoverboard fires, and we saw that the airlines were starting to ban them from flights”, said Von Stange, director of University Housing and Dining.

Washington State University leaders have banned one of the biggest holiday gifts of the 2015 season.

Patty Davis, a spokeswoman for the commission, said while there are safety standards for the individual parts of hoverboards, including the batteries and motors, there are no safety standards for hoverboards as a whole.

“I think it’s an unfortunate necessity”, he said. “I mean, it’s a college campus; it’s not a high school”.

“I wish it was different”, he said.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission last month reported at least a dozen incidents in the United States in which lithium ion batteries in hoverboards caught fire – destroying rooms and even homes.

The University of Hartford, University of Bridgeport and University of New Haven have banned hoverboards as well.

The Daily Camera reports (http://bit.ly/22Me2ph ) that CU-Boulder is now among several other universities across the country that has prohibited the use of hoverboards.