At Howard University, students have increasingly relied on e-scooters to move across its sprawling, hilly campus. But that convenience collided with a growing national concern last semester, when a scooter caught fire inside a residence hall. No one was injured, but the incident underscored a risk that fire officials across the country have been warning about: lithium-ion batteries can ignite suddenly, burn intensely, and spread quickly. When they go up, they don’t burn like a normal fire.
Most e-scooters are powered by lithium-ion batteries. These are the same type used in phones and laptops, but larger, more powerful, and often more vulnerable to damage. When those batteries are defective, overcharged, exposed to heat, or made with low-quality components, they can enter what experts call “thermal runaway,” which is a chain reaction where the battery essentially overheats itself and releases flammable gases that ignite in seconds.
The result is not a slow-building fire, but an explosive one. Flames can shoot out, toxic smoke fills the air, and the fire can be difficult to extinguish. In enclosed spaces like dorm rooms, hallways, or elevators, that risk multiplies quickly.
Fire departments in major cities have issued repeated warnings about these devices, particularly as cheaper, off-brand scooters and replacement batteries flood the market. Many incidents nationwide have been linked not just to the scooters themselves, but to faulty chargers, modified batteries, or devices left plugged in for long periods of time.
In response, Howard University banned scooters from inside campus buildings. The policy mirrors decisions made at colleges nationwide, where administrators are grappling with how to manage devices powered by volatile batteries. From New York to California, universities have restricted or outright prohibited e-scooters and e-bikes in dorms and academic buildings after a rise in battery-related fires.
But at Howard, the fix created a new problem.
Students who once kept their scooters in dorm rooms or classrooms are now forced to leave them outside where many students say they’re being stolen. Reports of missing scooters have surfaced across campus, including near the School of Business, Burr Gymnasium, and residence halls.
The theft problem is not just happening at Howard. Campuses across the country are seeing a rise in stolen scooters, and in some places it’s becoming one of the dominant forms of campus theft. On multiple campuses, police and safety reports show sharp increases in scooter-related thefts. At the University of Maryland, for example, officials reported more than 70 scooter thefts in just over a month in fall 2024.
At the University of South Florida, 170 out of 175 “motor vehicle thefts” in 2024 were scooters or bikes. At University of California, Riverside, campus police said thefts of scooters and e-bikes were “up significantly,” and noted that other jurisdictions are seeing the same increase. And at University of California, Berkeley, scooter thefts jumped from just 6 in 2020 to more than 300 in 2023, and continues to rise. Even smaller clusters of incidents, like alerts at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill warning of multiple scooter thefts in a single month, show how widespread and normalized the problem has become.
Zoom out, and researchers and campus safety analysts are saying that theft tied to scooters and e-bikes is helping drive an overall rise in campus property crime nationwide.
For students, the stakes are financial as well as practical. E-scooters can cost hundreds of dollars, and for many, they are not a luxury but a primary mode of transportation.
The situation highlights a growing dilemma on college campuses where students are trying to figure out how to balance legitimate safety concerns with the everyday realities they face. Policies designed to prevent fires may be exposing students to another kind of loss that universities have yet to fully address.
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