Insider Knowledge, Outsider Practice: The Disruptive Liberatory Potential of Skateboarding in US Higher Education

Abstract

This conceptual paper articulates how the unique social, experiential, and navigational perspectives of college skateboarders contribute to their potential as changemakers in higher education. Drawing from the theory of campus ecology and multidisciplinary body of skateboarding scholarly literature, this paper applies the unique navigational and analytical lenses of skate culture to render visible oppressive institutional conditions that are currently absent from educational scholarship. In order to accomplish this application, I conduct an extensive search for literature, and begin the writing by contextualizing the macro- and micro-systemic elements of the U.S. tertiary system and emplacing skateboarding within them. Then, I use skate scholarship to argue that skateboarding provides new critical perspectives on the philosophies of public space, policing, and social deterrence that manifest in university spaces. Additionally, this work explores campus skaters’ resistance to systemic challenges such as racism, cisheteropatriarchy, and neoliberal capitalism. I conclude by offering future directions for both theoretical and empirical research that employ skateboarding as a lens through which to examine U.S. higher education.