The electric scooter: To some, it’s an essential form of transportation. To others, it’s a traffic nuisance. To others still, it simply looks ridiculous. The topic of electric scooters at Kenyon is a surprisingly divisive issue, with scooter-owners often the butt of the joke. Electric scooters have increased in popularity in recent years, following national demand for greater electric micromobility, according to a 2023 NACTO report. Students have mobilized, too: your walk to class may be underscored by the steady drone of an electric motor coming up from behind. A glance around campus may also reveal a rogue athlete zipping their way to the Lowry Center, or a line of scooters parked in front of Chalmers Library. The Collegian interviewed some of these scooter owners, who shed light on their experiences at Kenyon despite the anti-scooter campus culture. 

Yasha Zehra ’26 lives in Thomas House on Kenyon’s North Campus. To get to her classes on foot would take upwards of 12 minutes, but she’s narrowed this time down to a cool three-and-a-half minutes with the help of her electric scooter. Zehra inherited her first scooter from her brother at the start of her sophomore year. Though the original didn’t last, Zehra’s enthusiasm for it did; she bought a new electric scooter after her first broke down, and has been using it ever since. “I don’t think I look cool,” Zehra acknowledged, “but it’s just so convenient that it’s worth it.”

Zehra doesn’t keep her scooter to herself either. “[It] is pretty communal, a lot of people use it,” she told the Collegian. One of the people she loaned it to was Rohaan Basit ’29. “Instantly, I fell in love with it,” Basit said. Although he was originally planning on buying an electric bike, Basit preferred the convenience and portability of the scooter instead. He is the third person Zehra has convinced to make the scooter transition. She acknowledges that “walking is the only physical activity that [people] have, so buying a scooter would kind of take away from that.” However, those who ask to borrow her scooter are often those who are most skeptical. “There’s a reason they keep using it,” she said. Basit echoed this sentiment. When people who used to make fun of his scooter tried it out themselves, “They just can’t let go of it.” 

Mous Gassama ’27, a midfielder on the men’s soccer team, found himself in a similar predicament as Zehra when he was assigned to New Apartment housing on Kenyon’s North Campus. Gassama was averse to making the trek from the New Apartments to the Lowry Center on foot, so he invested in an electric scooter that he now shares with his teammate. “Once we got a scooter, I guess it started a chain reaction, and everybody else [on the team] started getting a scooter. … I think it was a good purchase,” he told the Collegian. Gassama said that he often drives around with other teammates on scooters, establishing a sense of community among the team. 

Teddy Holleran ’27 also appreciates the convenience of his electric scooter. Holleran is on the football team and told the Collegian that his scooter was “super helpful considering I came to Kenyon [with] a fractured femur and on crutches.” He could not walk anywhere from his New Apartment housing and could not get parking anywhere besides South 2, on the opposite side of campus. Holleran said his electric scooter “was definitely a life-saver in that sense.” In a message to the Collegian, he acknowledged that “some people find it annoying, especially people scooting past on walking paths. But at the end of the day, everyone has their own reason for having one.” 

Aside from the convenience and community of electric scooters, Zehra told the Collegian that she feels a tie to her scooter for another reason: “I have a lot of pride being the only brown girl riding a scooter.” When Zehra first brought her scooter to campus, the only other people she saw on scooters were men. “There was not a single girl. When I started riding it, I was slightly insecure about it.” She stuck to her decision, though, and as time went on, she began to spot more girls riding scooters. “It just makes me so happy to see that because it’s still a male-dominated thing for some reason,” she said. 

On a campus where anti-scooter rhetoric is so prevalent, those who choose to cruise make a statement. Whether this statement is intentional or unintentional, scooter owners take campus criticism in stride (or, rather, with the wind in their hair from atop their motorized vehicles). Kenyon’s campus, which boasts about accepting differences, is ironically hesitant to accept different methods of transportation. So, to scooter naysayers, Basit puts it concisely: “Don’t hate on it unless you’ve tried it.”