The Village Idiot(s) 

March 24, 2007

We get a lot of emails and Community Bulletin Board postings from people who attend UCSB or SBCC.   We are frequently struck by just how stupid some of their comments are.  Here is a Community Bulletin Board posting that represents hundreds of the stupidest of the lot.  

“Message: I have no idea what you mean by drinking Kool-Aid.  Your are woefully, completely, inaccurate about your portrayal of Isla Vista.  It is a wonderfully safe place, where people generally don't even lock their doors.  In your hometown (Saratoga) people do lock their doors, you have a priest (Randy Benas) arrested for rape, women who shoot their boyfriends on Halloween, and a ferocious drug problem.  I grew up in the San Francisco suburbs too, where sex crazed and drugged out parents ignored kids.  I hated it and Isla Vista is way, way better.  Santa Barbara and Goleta are no better... there was just a gang killing last Wednesday on State Street.  The movie `Alpha Dog' portrays Goleta and Santa Barbara kids pretty well.. IV is way, way better.  You are just so wrong about IV, it must be your own unresolved hatred for your own mistakes when you were a student here.  You can make bad choices in any place in the world, don't blame the community for your choices.  Isla Vista is great, safe, and full of friendly and helpful people.  I love it and everyone I know here loves it two.  We are vegans, we don't even drink Kool-Aid, we juice fresh organic veggies from the wonderful Food Coop here every day.  I don't know anyone who uses drugs and darned few people I know drink.  I frankly think you are exaggerating the tiny fraction of bad behavior in IV to rationalize your own bad choices when you were here. Signed TS”

Where do we begin?  First, we don’t censor anyone; however, we do have rules about posting.  Apparently this poster doesn’t bother to read the rules.  One of the rules is: “Posting must be related to matters associated with the site and UCSB .”  This site is about UCSB/IV, not Saratoga.  We have told him before that if he wants to start a site about Saratoga, or any other town, he is free to do so. 

We did want to post this email to prove a point we have been making.  Our poster is either one of the stupidest people around (Unfortunately we get hundreds of emails and postings displaying this level of stupidity and lots of them have valid UCSB email addresses) or in the alternative, he is an apologist for crime in IV. 

Anyone who suggests that IV is a safe place to live must be either stupid or stone (most likely both).  According to the IVFP and the Santa Barbara county Sheriff (the people who actually keep track the crime statistics for the area, 25% of crime in Santa Barbara county is in IV 

Since the county  of Santa Barbara has about 421,625 residents and the bucolic little village of IV has a population of 18,344, some simple math would suggest that about 4% of population creates about 25% of crime.  Another way to state it would be that IV has a crime rate six time the rate in the county as a whole. 

A quick read of the IVFP website would give the impression that IV has problems.    The Sheriff even publishes a  “survival guide” 

Our news section focuses on some of the crime in IV.  Most of what we focus on is UCSB student-related crime.  In addition to the IVFP keeping records on crime in IV, the UCSB Police Department keeps track of crime on campus.  The UCSB monthly activity logs can be viewed online. 

The Daily Nexus has written about the violence problems within the IV/UCSB community (although candidly, they do not focus on crime, if anything, they under report it).  Perhaps our readers might find Why is IV so violent?  interesting reading. 

Others have documented and commented on the history of violence on IV.  An online History of IV describes the goal of the IVFP is to  “help stifle the area's extraordinary crime rate.”

The UCSB website 93106 provides a rare but candid look at local problems.   Sarah and students like her are leaving UCSB, in part, because of the living conditions in Isla Vista, where nearly half of UCSB's student body resides. The overall crime rate in I.V. exceeds that of the surrounding area by 500 percent, and the rate of reported sexual assault is 400 percent higher.  There are 22 liquor licenses in I.V. where much of the population is not of legal drinking age. The quality of the building construction in rental units is often substandard, and students complain of high rents, termites, unfairly seized deposits, and noise pollution that is unbearable.  "Almost every night people who are intoxicated are loud and obnoxious, which makes it difficult if you are home trying to do school work," a student explained.   93106 is a newsletter for the faculty and staff of UCSB

The point of the our website is not to point out isolated criminal activity.  Crime occurs everywhere.  The point of our site is to point out that IV, contrary to the ramblings of a huge portion of the UCSB/IV community is a violent and dangerous place. 

For god's sake TS please go out and eat a cheeseburger. We fear you must be suffering from some chemical imbalance.  Eat something so that we don't have to do an intervention on you.