Carving up campus: Skaters cause damage

For his birthday, Jeremy had his mother drive him and five of his friends into Princeton for a day of skateboarding at all the best sites on campus, including Scudder Plaza, Princeton Stadium and the steps in front of Frist Campus Center.

Jeremy’s celebration differs from the typical private celebration: His birthday skate is available on youtube.com for all to see, adding to a growing collection of the website’s videos of young skateboarders seeking thrills at the University.

Sharing their experiences over the internet is part of what brings teenage skateboarders from all over central New Jersey to campus, University Grounds Manager James Consolloy said.

“They’re pretty organized,” Consolloy explained. “So they put their videos on the internet, and they have their own blogs. They’re pretty sophisticated.”

Though some skaters get rides from their parents, most arrive in Princeton via public transportation, Consolloy said.

”I would say a majority either come in by bus or on the Dinky. Some of the kids are coming from Kendall Park, and some of them are probably coming from New Brunswick,” he said, explaining that the skaters often “have the whole day planned ahead of them.”

Another YouTube video posted by a skater going by the moniker “Wasserman08” showed evidence of such organization. Smoothly edited and set to the tune of “Trendy” by Reel Big Fish, the music video clip shows a group of skateboarders doing jumps and flips off the steps of Robertson Hall and skating around other areas of campus.

“We were gonna try and mess with Public Safety,” Wasserman08 said in the video description, “but they never showed up.”

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Charles Davall, Public Safety’s deputy director for operations, said that skaters make the trek to Princeton throughout the year, noting that they come most often “when the weather is warmer and the local schools are off on summer vacation.”

Scudder Plaza, Princeton Stadium, and Whitman College are among the skaters’ favorite spots, Davall noted.

Skaters may bring publicity to Princeton through YouTube, but damage caused by skateboarders has cost the University tens of thousands of dollars in recent years, Consolloy said.

“About five years ago, we estimated that the damage to campus had cost us between [$70,000 and $80,000] up to that point,” Consolloy explained, adding that damage done since then has likely been even costlier because of the growth of the YouTube culture as well as an increase in the cost of materials.

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Some recently damaged campus structures include the granite benches in Whitman College and a wall between Blair Hall and the U-Store.

“When we built Whitman College we created very nicely sculptured limestone benches in the cloister in the south courtyard,” Consolloy said. “Right now, those benches are being marred, chipped and damaged by these skateboarders jumping off of them.”

In Princeton Stadium, Consolly said, skaters “do a lot of jumps off of the concrete walls to the point where they busted the electrical outlets, because they were using them to flip off of.”

According to a PowerPoint presentation Consolloy provided to The Daily Princetonian, the University has spent $3,400 to fix the granite walls on the corner of Washington Road and Nassau Street outside of Firestone Library and $4,700 to touch up the steps leading down from 1879 Hall, among other repairs.

Aside from damage to campus, Davall called the University’s legal liability for the skateboarders’ potential injuries a “legitimate concern.”

A YouTube video posted in April 2008 by a user named “Breeeex33,” for example, showed a young man jumping off the steps of Robertson Hall, falling face-first in Scudder Plaza.

Davall said that Public Safety officers try to disperse skaters when they see them.

“When officers see people skateboarding, they will typically tell them to stop and send them on their way,” he said.

Still, Public Safety officers often encounter second- and third-time offenders, Davall said.

“If we see the same person again skateboarding, the officer will likely stop them, get their name [and] address and give them a written warning not to skateboard on campus,” Davall explained.

The third time, the officer “would bring them to [Public Safety] headquarters and contact their parents,” he said.

Consolloy said he did not think a skateboarder has ever been punished.

“We’ve never fined any of them because they’ve been minors, so it’s a matter of heading them off at the path,” Consolloy said, adding that to the best of his knowledge “we haven’t to date taken disciplinary action.”

Besides threatening to contact parents, University administrators have taken other measures to free the campus of skateboarding teens.

The University contributed $25,000 for the construction of a skate park about three miles north of campus in Princeton Township, Director of Community and Regional Affairs Kristin Appelget said in an e-mail.

“We made this contribution with the dual intent of supporting a community recreation initiative and the hope that a space that was purposely designed for skateboarding would provide a safer environment for local skateboarding enthusiasts than does our campus,” Appelget said.

The park has been open since December, Appelget said. She noted that it is “premature to try to determine if there is a measurable impact with [fewer] skateboarders on campus.”

Public Safety’s presence seemed to affect a small group of teenagers skating near 185 Nassau St. last Friday.

The skaters said that they normally like to skate near the Wilson School fountain but were deterred by the frequent Public Safety patrols there, which led them to seek other concrete pastures.