American Parkour

Chief (removed),

   I am writing to you regarding an issue that you might not even be aware of yet. I am involved with an athletic organization called Wyoming Parkour. Although we do training in a wide variety of different areas, we tend to spend a significant amount of time training on the UW Campus.
   Let me back up a bit and explain more about what parkour is. It is a sport, a discipline, almost a martial art. Its goal is to learn to utilize your surroundings, your environment, to help yourself move faster. This is done by such means as running, jumping, vaulting, and climbing. It is a mentally challenging and physically demanding sport, and it must be taken slowly and carefully to avoid damaging your own body and your environment.
   We have been actively training on UW grounds for over a year with no problems. However, on Saturday, March 19th 2011, we were approached by a UW Police Officer, who told us that there had been a complaint against us, and we had to stop “climbing on buildings”. This was no doubt referring to one of the many physical conditioning exercises we do, making our way around the circumference of certain buildings, hanging from our fingertips gripped on the tiny ledge where there is an indent in the wall slightly over our heads. Again, we have never had issues while doing this sort of training in the past, and were frankly quite surprised that anyone would consider it a problem. The officer who was talking to us was quite nice about it, explaining that the complaint was not coming from him, but he had to take action because of the liability concern.
   Our main concern, however, is that we are not by any means the only people who utilize the UW Campus for physical fitness. People run all over campus; on the sidewalks, in the AA, even in the actual bleachers of the AA and War Memorial Stadium. There is just as much potential for injury there, if not more, as there is in a group of people properly doing parkour training and conditioning. How is it fair that they can use the campus grounds to conduct their daily physical training, and we cannot?
   The question I am really getting at is this: Where is the line drawn? Bear in mind that absolutely everything is some sort of obstacle / training tool for us. Rails, wheelchair ramps, benches, rocks, short walls, tall walls, fences… Everything is used, in one way or another, to increase our physical fitness and spatial awareness. But if we are forbidden from doing anything that is “potentially dangerous” on UW grounds, we need to know where the line is. If a student in a hurry to get to class vaults over a bike rack, will he be stopped by UW Police for “endangering himself”? What if he vaults over a handrail? What about a wall? At some point in this progression, people who do not realize the incredible amount of training and precautions that go into this will probably start to complain. That is, I believe, what happened on the Saturday training session previously mentioned, and why I am writing this letter.
   Also understand that we are not a group of hoodlums, out to cause trouble. All of us take our training quite seriously, for whatever reasons we have for continuing it. In my own case, I am a soldier with the Wyoming Army National Guard, as well as a Correctional Officer for the Wyoming Department Of Corrections. I have physical standards I need to maintain, and this training is how I choose to do so. We have had reputable reporters from the Laramie Boomerang and CBS Channel 5 News do stories on us, and we have never had cause to complain about UW’s hospitality. We even have enough current UW students training with us that we are working on forming an official RSO – The University of Wyoming Parkour Club.
   Ultimately, we do not want to cause problems for UW or anyone associated with it. We do not want to make more work for your law enforcement officers, nor get ourselves in any sort of trouble. All we want is to be able to continue our parkour training in peace, in our favorite, most useful area to practice and condition in.

If you want to contact me personally about this matter, feel free to use any of the following contact information. Thank you for your time.

(removed)
Torrington, WY 82240

(removed)@us.army.mil

307-(removed)

Sincerely,
Daniel Steiger

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