Skateboarding and Longboarding on and Around Campus

Even though alternative transportation is rampant on Whitman’s small campus, only a handful of Whitman students electric skateboard. Whether longboarding to class or skating for leisure, those who own boards on campus represent a small fraction of the student body.

Whitman’s campus isn’t exactly ideal for the sport. For skateboarding you mainly just need an open, rarely frequented area with various obstacles and terrain. If there is a skatepark nearby, obviously that is a large draw, but for Whitman students, the nearest park is in College Place. On campus, skaters use the small area outside of Olin Hall or can be seen behind North Hall practicing tricks.

As for longboarding, all one really needs is a hilly area that is hopefully nicely paved, ideally with not much traffic. In Walla Walla, serious elevation change is something of a rarity, so most long boarders on campus mainly direct their hobby toward getting to class. However, there are students who do manage to find places off campus to longboard from time to time, like first-year Connor Hood, who likens his hobby to other extreme sports.

“[Skating] allows me to take a break from the externally legislated tasks an individual has to do at school and … do something that is purely for me; it simply allows me to have a release and get out excess energy,” said Zach Gordy, a sophomore skateboarder.

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