With racks overflowing and little protection from rain, students say the campus offers few safe options to secure electric vehicles.
Danette Heredia | Staff Writer
As scooter thefts have spiked within the last month, according to FIUPD case logs, a lack of accommodation for electric vehicles plagues residential students across campus.
According to police reports, the majority of these thefts are occurring at residential buildings on campus, with Tamiami Hall being the most frequent.
A chart of the residential locations where scooter thefts have occurred within the last six months and their frequency. | Danette Heredia, PantherNOW
Experiences reporting scooter thefts to FIUPD often lead nowhere, as officers and students both acknowledge the difficulty of identifying vehicles in a campus filled with similar-looking models.
“The police can’t really do anything because there are so many scooters…If it gets taken, it’s really on you to find it. The police are not going to be able to do anything about it,” says Jordan Dash, a resident of Parkview.
To aid this crisis, FIUPD encourages students to register their bikes and scooters, so that in the case they do get stolen, police will have more information for their recovery, yet students are wondering how useful the information really is.
“If my bike gets stolen and one of their determining factors is a serial number, are they going to flip over every bike to find a serial number? Like I had to flip my bike to find my serial number. The answer is no,” says Johane Saintil, a resident of Tamiami Hall.
Students are also encouraged to securely lock their scooters with a physical lock onto the provided bike racks outside of residential buildings.
While more students have adopted this practice now more than ever, the issue now shifts to a lack of designated space for the abundance of vehicles students want to secure.
Fall 2025 was acknowledged as the largest incoming freshman class, posing a challenge to providing proper accommodations for every student living on campus.
“They wrote out an email to all the students saying you’re not supposed to lock your bikes on the chairs, but there’s literally no space…There are also old bikes that have been there for a while that have not been removed as well,” says Johane Saintil.
Numerous scooters locked to benches outside of Parkview West. | Danette Heredia, PantherNOW
In addition to the lack of space, electric vehicles are far more common on campus, forcing students to be strategic about where they park their transportation in the rainy state of Florida.
“I don’t like to lock it in places that don’t have shade over it, because if it starts raining…it’ll mess up my scooter. So finding a place that not only has an open spot to lock it up, but that’s also over a covering so it doesn’t get rained on, it’s tricky,” explains Jordan Dash.
Essentially, this renders uncovered bike racks impractical, as students are forced to gravitate towards the overcrowded racks to preserve their transportation.
A graph representing the monthly reported cases of scooter thefts within the year, so far. | Danette Heredia, PantherNOW
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