Policy Regarding the Increased Usage of Electronic Scooters in BUFS

More students are using them to come up the hill of our campus

Managing Editor Seo Yun-chan

danseo123@naver.com

Since the government of Korea declared that all educational institutions should hold offline classes in 2022, Busan University of Foreign Studies has welcomed the students coming back to campus. The students were very eager to return to campus, since they have spent the past two years studying in their homes.

However, the problem with the campus at BUFS is that it is half way up Geumjeong Mountain. Students are always complaining at the how high the campus is. To solve this problem, BUFS ran more shuttle buses, signed contracts with city buses to come up to the campus and so on. Still, this was not enough for some students, especially those students who live close to the campus. They live right outside of BUFS, so it makes no sense for them to walk to the shuttle bus station or spend money to ride the city bus. Students thought of some ways to make it easier to go up the hill and they found a solution.

Since 2020, the use of electronic scooters has increased and companies have expanded the range and the numbers of these rental vehicles. Adults who have a driver's license can easily locate and rent these vehicles, paying just a small amount of money to ride these scooters. There are now even electronic scooter stations. The students of BUFS found that this is the solution. More and more students have started riding these scooters up the steep hill to the campus.

As such, more and more of these electric scooters have been appearing on campus grounds. In particular, students who live in the campus dormitory have been using these vehicles a lot. However, the problem is that there is no official station or parking area for these electric scooters, so the students just leave them outside the college or dormitory buildings. Some students started to complain about how they were blocking the road, or that the parked scooters were getting in their way.

The Campus Management Team quickly found out about this problem. They tried to reduce the number of students who use the scooters, but it is not an easy problem to solve. They even asked the company that runs the electric scooters in Geumjeong Province 'Ssing-Ssing' to remove the electric scooters parked in the campus. However, the company decided not to carry out the request made by BUFS.

There are even potential risks and dangers, since our campus is so steep. Some students might fall of the vehicle while riding or even bump into a car or a facility. To these points, the Campus Management Team answered, "There is a policy regarding parking and parked vehicles in our university. Therefore, if any problem happens, it will be dealt with by following the policy. The main problem is that most of the electric scooters are not personally owned, but they are rented. However, according to our policy, we regard them as personal vehicles, and so if anything happens, the user will be held responsible."

When asked about the parked scooters outside the buildings of our university, they said, "We already contacted the company, but they are not responding to our requests. We have told them that if they do not come and take away the vehicles, we will throw them away. However, since the vehicles are not our property, we cannot actually remove or throw them away. That is why we cannot do anything about them. We will try to find a new solution to deal with them."