When people have problems, they frequently go to their friends for advice and help. Outside of your immediate family, who knows you better than your friends? Therefore, it would seem natural to rely upon their advice.

However, there may be times when your friends are not the best source of help. Before discussing who is your best source of help, it might be worthwhile to relay a story about a recent visit that was made by a staffer from thedarksideofucsb.com to the Isla Vista Foot Patrol (IVFP). Upon arrival at the IVFP office at about 2:00 p.m., the staffer decided to wait to approach an officer standing out front because a young female UCSB student who had arrived at the same time was obviously very upset and wanted to speak to the officer. The student, probably 18 or 19 years old, was wearing pajamas and slippers and told the officer that someone had pointed a gun at her and attempted to carjack her.

The officer asked for a description of the perpetrator and where the incident had taken place. He then reached for his radio microphone but before keying the microphone, he asked how long ago the incident occurred. The victim rolled her eyes up while calculating the time and then responded, “about midnight last night, about 14 hours ago.”

The officer put his radio away and asked the victim why hadn’t she reported it last night. Her answer was that she was “a little drunk” and “they had some grass in the car.” As it turned out, the victim had been truly terrified by the sight of the gun and wanted to call the police, but her two friends that were with her in the car insisted that they not call the cops. They did not want to get in trouble for the booze and the grass.

Can you see the problem here? It is simple – when you engage in illegal activities (even a little underage drinking) you may lose your rights. This is doubly so when your so-called friends may not be a direct victim but do not want their illegal or immoral activity made public. Moreover, by not reporting the matter to the police, this UCSB student and her friends placed the community in danger. The police might have been able to apprehend this armed carjacker had the information been given to them in a timely fashion.

An officer of a local sorority relayed this story to us: The sorority in question required its entire membership to sign a no-alcohol contract. Of course, all the parents felt good about their daughters’ no-alcohol agreement and this type of contract figures in to the decision process for parents and students when selecting where the student is to live. As it turns out, the sorority systematically (with the sorority's officers’ knowledge and connivance and the meek acquiesce of the non-drinkers) continually violated the no alcohol contract. Virtually every event that the sorority organized included the use of alcohol and frequently drugs. When one of its members was sexually assaulted at a party that the sorority had organized, during which excessive amounts of alcohol were consumed, the leadership of the sorority pressured the victim to not make a complaint because it will “get the whole house in trouble.” Even worse, the next day several members of the perpetrator’s frat house contacted the victim through friends and suggested (read threatened) that they would expose the victim’s previous consensual (but active) sexual history to her parents. Suddenly, the victim of the sexual assault is now faced not only with the harrowing task of filing a complaint and confronting her attacker but also with the difficulty of overcoming the social pressure (from a large number of her peers) to not rat out the sorority from those who “don’t want to get the house in trouble.” And to make matters worse, her friends now threaten to go public with the details (apparently somewhat sordid) of her consensual sexual activities.

If your friends try to minimize a crime that has been committed against you, if your friends try to talk you out of calling the police, if your friends try to intimidate you with your previous conduct – call the police and then get new friends. Allowing criminal conduct to go unreported hurts everyone. It potentially hurts the next victim who might not have to go through the same ordeal as you if you had only reported the crime.

If you engage in illegal activities (underage drinking, false ID, drugs, abuse of alcohol, cheating) you are exposing yourself to the possibility of being a victim of a crime and not being able to report it. Perpetrators often rely on the fact that their victims are too drunk to report or remember the crime. Moreover, they know you will be less likely to report a crime if you are engaging in illegal or immoral conduct.

College students in general seem to suffer from a massive case of the “don’t rat, don’t tell” syndrome. This odious syndrome is endemic at UCSB and is exacerbated by the “it-might-hurt-their-career” malady. Very simply put, both of these attitudes are dangerous. If you assume that you should not report suspicious behavior because you simply distrust the police more than the perpetrators, you will ultimately become a victim. Moreover, if you repudiate your civic responsibility to report crime because you do not want to hurt someone’s career for a mistake they made in college, you are then partly, at least morally, responsible for future acts of misconduct. Most assuredly, some people should “wash out” before entering a profession. Would you want a sex offender to be a gynecologist? Who would want a pedophile running a program for children? It is the public record that in large part helps society to weed out people who are a danger to society. If you do not report wrongdoing, no record is made and society loses part of its ability to reward good behavior and punish bad behavior.

Civic responsibility is an area that conflicts directly with the “don’t rat, don’t tell” policy that seems to have the tacit approval of a significant segment of the UCSB community. During a recent frat party, a guest, not a member of the sponsoring fraternity, was a little drunk and while leaving (incredibly to go to another party) sideswiped a car in the parking lot that belonged to one member of the fraternity. About ten or twelve members witnessed the event. The driver stopped and told the car’s owner (and the group then assembled) that he had insurance and would pay for the damage. The owner of the damaged car wanted to call the police in order to get a report filed, but the intoxicated driver pleaded that the police not be called since he was “really f****ed up” and knew he would be arrested and it would be his second DUI. Someone in the group then said, “I know this guy and he is a member of (name withheld) fraternity and that’s cool. He’s gonna pay, so why call the cops? If the cops arrest him, it could screw up his career.” The person whose car was damaged and the rest of the group seemed to accept this elucidation of the drunk driver’s character. Once the drunk’s bona fides (mere membership in another fraternity) were established, he merrily drove off without a single word of protest from ten or twelve of UCSB’s best and brightest. Later, when challenged about why they did not stop him from driving while intoxicated, two of the people present at the crash site discussion replied in shocked indignation, “It was his choice to drive drunk, that is on him not on us. He made a bad choice.”

Really? He made a bad choice? First, if a person is drunk, they are considered, under the law, to be impaired. When one is impaired, by definition, they cannot make a reasoned decision. Everyone present in the group that let this person drive away drunk could have been responsible, morally and possibly legally, if the drunk driver had injured someone after driving away with their tacit approval.

The UCSB medical facility offers counseling to students experiencing difficulties. Many students are helped by the programs they offer – we provide a link on this website to the UCSB website. But there are serious problems at the UCSB facility. In a December 19, 2004, article written by Morgan Green in the Santa Barbara News Press entitled “Mental health woes at UCSB,” Ms Green reported that student mental health problems are soaring at UCSB and are overwhelming campus health and counseling services. Dr. Cynthia Bowers, director of UCSB Student Health Services, confirmed Ms Green’s comments and called it, "an epidemic." Dr Bowers went on to say that there is a lack of staff, the crisis shows no sign of letting up, and it “…is just the tip of the iceberg.” So while there is help available, the caregivers are overwhelmed; moreover, while Dr. Bowers ascribed a number of reasons for the crisis, she never evened mentioned the possible influence of drugs, alcohol, excessive partying (lack of sleep), and financial irresponsibility – just like some friends who would rather cover-up their bad behavior by convincing you not to report a crime to police, UCSB has their reasons for not wanting to disclose problems with the UCSB environment, and Dr. Bowers does her best to make sure the blame-game needle points to the families and the students. The article states that Dr. Bowers believes …there are more students coming from childhoods closely organized and supervised by parents, and they haven't had enough time on their own to learn how to solve their own problems. Dr. Bowers went on to state, “There was always somebody there telling them what to do. Many don't have the social and conflict-resolution skills they need to survive here.”

One would be hard put to find many students who didn’t know a fellow UCSB student who had problems as the result of drugs, alcohol, promiscuity, violence or partying. While UCSB may be making an effort to treat the symptoms, it appears that they may be ignoring (at least publicly) some of the root causes. In order to treat the root causes that emanate from UCSB/IV, it would be necessary for the University to acknowledge the problems and provide some leadership to ameliorate them – a discussion that UCSB would rather not have.

Additionally, while the University offers some services, they may only offer only a limited number of options. Rather than relying upon one source, a mixture of disciplines including those not provided by the University may provide a better solution than a mono-bureaucratic approach.

If you think that you may be experiencing any type of problem or you are concerned about your behavior or that of your friends and fellow students, the first place to look for help is your family. Your family is your best resource – they know you, they love you, and they will be there for you long after your friends, your social clubs, and UCSB have forgotten your name. Remember, no matter how serious you feel the problems are, there is always a good solution. While important, the college experience is a very small part of your life. Try not to focus on the college mentality to solve problems, but rather seek help to resolve problems from a more balanced perspective.