Skate column advocates cavity search and seizure

Editor’s note: This letter references the column “Don’t hate the skaters, hate the wheels,” by Devon Stevens, published in the Daily Lobo on Friday. The column was satire.

Editor,

I am a female UNM student. I also happen to ride my longboard around from time to time. It is much easier to do so during the summer semester because there are fewer people around to clog the sidewalks and to take ransom. But a lot of my fellow skaters choose to skate during times at the University when the campus is heavily populated, such as the start of term.

I have a little trouble understanding this because it’s hard to stop when there are people everywhere (get on a board and you’ll see what I mean).

The obtuse belligerence of your column startled me. Skaters can hide wheels in their long hair? I have long hair and I can tell you that at any time I have my cell phone, spare change, some pears or oranges to snack on later, two small children and an extra tampon stashed away in my hair. But wheels? Never wheels.

Sorry, but stationing police and guards to confiscate wheels at every corner seems like a waste of my tuition dollars. The football team also seems like a waste, but don’t get me started on that. As for the cavity searches, I doubt you will find any female skater willing to get frisked in public for hiding wheels in her lady parts. If you think this will go over smoothly with any skater you run across, you are sorely mistaken. If I were searched in this manner, I would give a “good, hard crack to the jaw” to whoever dared to put his hands on me, trumped-up charge or not.

This is a brilliant infringement on privacy you have suggested and it is quite sickening. If the Fourth Amendment holds less power than ever, why don’t we search you for wheels or maybe the illegal drugs it is blatantly obvious that you are smoking? A full cavity search, in front of the entire school, faculty and students, with Schmidly there as a witness, and a couple people taking notes.

If your hobby is hating hobbyists, and it is acceptable to hate hobbyists, then I hate you. No one “rules” this campus. It belongs to the people, at least in theory. (Once McDonald’s starts sponsoring our soccer team, I think I’m going to transfer).

Victoria Cardenas
UNM student