• Rich Barlow

    Senior Writer

    Photo: Headshot of Rich Barlow, an older white man with dark grey hair and wearing a grey shirt and grey-blue blazer, smiles and poses in front of a dark grey backdrop.

    Rich Barlow is a senior writer at BU Today and Bostonia magazine. Perhaps the only native of Trenton, N.J., who will volunteer his birthplace without police interrogation, he graduated from Dartmouth College, spent 20 years as a small-town newspaper reporter, and is a former Boston Globe religion columnist, book reviewer, and occasional op-ed contributor. Profile

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There are 7 comments on BU Temporarily Prohibits Hoverboards

  1. It is unfortunate this article is devoid of pertinent information. Judging from the information surrounding raid on a Chinese firm at CES 2016 last week by the Feds,it appears that the (American)inventor of the hoverboard knows what he’s doing, but the 60-70 (primarily foreign)companies who are building clones and not paying patent royalties, don’t. Researching the background behind this story would help BU Today to connect BU to a timely case study in entrepreneurship and technology transfer.

  2. Those abominations are not hoverboards! They’re nothing but trendy, hands-free segways obsessed with EDM. They should be banned for posing a hazard to common decency. Here’s to the hopeful realization one day of mass-produced boards that actually hover.

    1. Good point, Marty, but your solution is simply to replace one trendy techno-gadget with another. That won’t address the growing public infatuation with whatever is the latest device on offer. The powers that be don’t have to worry about dissent or revolution when it’s so easy to distract people b/c a new phone’s always available.

      1. I think you completely missed the joke. “Marty McFly” from back to the future, complaining that these aren’t real hoverboards. The joke being that they had “real” hoverboards in that movie that McFly used.

  3. So the problem with these “hoverboards” is the batteries and improper battery chargers put in by Chinese companies. This is not a hoverboard problem, it’s a battery charging problem. I don’t see why banning a product because of the batteries is acceptable. They should instead not allow charging in university buildings. The same problem affects drones which also use Lithium Ion batteries and also come from China with improper chargers, but you don’t see the university banning drones.

    These hoverboards don’t spontaneously combust they catch fire when charged for too long. So I think it would be prudent to ban charging in university buildings.

    1. This is a hoverboard problem because these batteries & chargers must be used. Allowing hoverboards but forbidding charging in dorms or other BU properties would create an enforcement nightmare, but still not protect the BU community. In the interest of safety, the devices must be banned altogether.

  4. As a person of lithium sensitivity I am highly sensitive to lithium and ion radiation from things with lithium batteries like hoverboards. Until the university bans everything with a lithium battery BU will not be a safe space for me and I will decide to keep feeling oppressed. Even my advisor does not understand when my lithium oppression turns on because an electric car went by showering me with lithium Ions and radiation and I have a panic attack and miss my film studies final.

    ‘~’ Posted from my iPad ‘~’

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