Lincoln Center Students Need Hoverboards

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GRAPHIC ILLUSTRATION BY OLIVIA BONENFANT/THE OBSERVER

Do you hear the people sing? Singing the songs of tired men? It is the music of a people who will not walk at Rose Hill without hoverboards again.

By OLIVIA BONENFANT

Fordham Lincoln Center (FLC) students are facing one of the greatest trials of our college careers. No, it’s not that our university during the tumultuous Students for Justice in Palestine case said that we as students of a private institution actually do not possess the right to free speech. No, it’s not that our sole upperclassmen dorm is falling apart at the seams. It’s the absolutely inhumane injustice being done to every FLC student forced to commute to Rose Hill for a class or a lab. The perilous journey on the Ram Van is bad enough. But something much worse lurks upon arrival.

Walking.

It is outrageous that the university expects us to go through the arduous task of putting one foot in front of the other for longer than five total minutes to get to a class. We live and study on a campus with a grand total of four buildings — we can’t be expected to walk more than a few hundred feet at a time. We didn’t sign up for this. Where are the elevators to take us directly to class?

I’m sorry, it’s just that as a student of Lincoln Center, it already sends me into a confused frenzy the moment my class schedule lists a room number preceded by anything other than “LL.” 

There are 15 different buildings at Rose Hill. That’s not even including dorms.

Even worse, we students used to the finely tuned grid of Manhattan and the reliable sprawl of FLC’s underground hallways can’t even imagine the horror of needing to use Google Maps to find where our classes are. Google Maps is an indecipherable “resource,” full of streets with actual names and not numbers that reliably count up and down to tell you where you’re going. To add insult to injury, these streets aren’t even a straight line. They curve. The humanity. 

We aren’t used to such treatment and must be compensated accordingly. I believe I have the perfect solution: hoverboards.

That’s right, dear reader. Only high-tech, high-speed technology can save us from the perils of Rose Hill’s twisting streets and their confusing names.

With the power of a hoverboard, students accustomed to a commute of rushing from their McMahon dorm five minutes before their class begins can make up for all their horribly mismanaged time — trading running in desperate, asthmatic circles across Rose Hill for zipping straight to their classes with perfectly windswept hair. For an added benefit, the absolute core strength required to pilot these things will grant every FLC student the Instagram-ready abs they’ve always wanted.

Our tired legs can rest easy, now that we won’t have to walk cruel and inhumane distances. Eight acres? 85? Doesn’t matter when you don’t have to walk a step.

And how would this solve the problem of Rose Hill’s confusing, non-grid nature, free of our precious hallways? It wouldn’t — but it would make our burden easier to bear. It is far worse to be lost with only your legs and a heavy backpack to slow you down than with an instrument of high-speed travel to quickly carry you from one wrong turn to the next.

Hoverboards are so impractical, you may be thinking. And you know what? You’re absolutely wrong. A hoverboard would fit neatly into the Ram Van for easy transport, or could possibly be rented by Rose Hill’s ticket station for even more convenience (and profit, which we all know Fordham loves). The university wouldn’t even have to buy that many — just enough to cover the sad and downtrodden visiting Lincoln Center population. Rose Hill students don’t deserve consideration here. They know what they signed up for.