The University of California at Santa Barbara truly is a wonderful place. One cannot help but take pride in the accomplishments and successes achieved by many of those associated with UCSB.

Almost anytime you visit the UCSB website you can read a new announcement of the most recent UCSB achievement. The list of achievements and successes is amazing. Here are just a few recent pronouncements:

• Developed "smart" bio-nanotubes;
• Identified molecules that appear to inhibit a key perpetrator of Alzheimer's disease
• Elected 101 high-achieving seniors into the UCSB chapter of Phi Beta Kappa
• Discovered new properties of human bone.
• Achieved great successes with fund raising and grant awards.

Add to these the dozens of other successes announced every year, a stable of Nobel Prize winners, and literally thousand of individual success stories of the students who learn and grow at UCSB – how can you not be proud of UCSB? It is truly a great school and worthy of much praise.

In no small sense, it is the great successes of the university that so dramatically highlight its failures. It is a university poised for greatness but saddled with a shabby party school image. Juxtaposed to the wonderful things accomplished by the vast majority of all those associated with the university is its demeaning party school image.

Most of the criticism The Dark Side receives follows the theme of "you are devaluing our degree by focusing only on the Dark Side." This criticism is leveled not because those who criticize us do not believe the failures exist – even our most vocal critics admit that UCSB/IV has serious problems (a dark side). They readily admit the UCSB/IV community has real problems with alcohol and drug abuse, crime, and sexual assaults. Our detractors generally offer one of two defenses on behalf of UCSB:

1. They believe that neither the Dark Side nor anyone else not officially associated with UCSB should be allowed to criticize UCSB/IV. They subscribe to the ignore-it-and-it –will-go-away theory. Or,
2. They hold the university blameless – it is not UCSB's fault that IV has problems.

The former defense is not worthy of an honest university-level discussion. The latter is empirically untrue – not even the UCSB administration would deny that UCSB does bear responsibility for much of what is wrong with IV. Sixty percent of the IV population is associated with UCSB. UCSB Police have extended powers in IV and patrol the area along side sheriff's officers.

Unfortunately the administration continues to fail to address many of the issues that do drag the university's image down – issues that do devalue the UCSB degree.

In the recent Princeton Review college ratings, UCSB was ranked number four. Unfortunately, the ranking had nothing to do with academics. UCSB ranked number four on the list of "party schools." In the subcategories of partying it ranked as follows:

• 10th in the use of beer
• 17th in the use of hard liquor
• 14th in "reefer madness"

UUCSB did not rank in the top ten, the top twenty, or the top thirty schools for anything remotely resembling academics. All the great work and effort by its faculty and serious students is often undercut by a self-perpetuating image of a party school. Add to this image the dismal crime reports for the UCSB/IV area and you do not have the recipe for a top ranked school.

Of course, Chancellor Yang dismissed the Princeton Review. According to a Santa Barbara News Press report he said, "These are not a representative sample of our students. I'm suspicious about surveys that are used to market a product." (See excuse number one above.) However, Yang did not dismiss a recent Newsweek article which was also a rating based upon interviews rather than quantifiable data. Unfortunately, Yang seems to be proud of UCSB's "hottest school" rating in the Newsweek survey. UCSB actually posted the "hottest school" announcement on its website. Unfortunately, UCSB was honored as the hottest school for "access to surfing and skiing," not academics.

Every year UCSB claims to be taking action. The UCSB administration goes through the motions but it does not apply any effective (and usually simple) remedies to eliminate many of the self-perpetuating problems. The real question here is why. We believe that the answer to why UCSB takes no effective action was well delineated in an email we received from a long time local resident with a great deal of political history in the area:

"…UCSB overtly appeals to prospective students by trading on its reputation as a "party school." Anyone who is skeptical about this should take the time to read "College Prep: Surviving the College Tour" by James R. Petersen in the Education Life Supplement of the April 24, 2005 edition of The New York Times. In it, the author describes taking his daughter on an official UCSB tour (presumably organized Yonie Harris's Office of Student Life) during which their student guide boasted about couch burning and urinating in public as two of the more amusing pastimes of the IV party scene. Is it any wonder that the distinguished Dean of Students sold her house in IV and moved elsewhere many years ago?

Having been lured to the community by UCSB's permissive attitude and the county's long-standing tradition of laissez-faire law enforcement, the unruly behavior of IV's youthful residents is – not unreasonably – a product of their expectations. IV's international reputation as a rowdy, wide-open party town was built over many years under conditions that were tolerated – and in some instances, deliberately fostered – by individuals in the highest positions of authority."

On June 10, 2005, Chancellor Yang announced a new committee: The Isla Vista Commission. The commission's website clearly shows that this committee will be controlled by the university and will undoubtedly provide no meaningful reforms. There is not one single person on the committee who does not work for the university – talk about a lack of diversity! Our apologies to those members of the committee who are well intentioned and truly interested in improving the UCSB/IV experience; but it just will not happen with a committee of inside-the-box UCSB thinkers who are all on the UCSB payroll and controlled by UCSB "facilitators." What do you think the output would be if President Bush formed a committee consisting of President Bush, Vice President Chaney, and Secretary of Defense Rumsfield to report on the progress and status of the war in Iraq? The results would be about as useful as what we expect to see from the new Isla Vista Commission.

The good Chancellor’s announcement letter of the commission reads like a chamber of commerce PR piece. In his memo to the committee Yang states that the propose of the committee is to …"initiate or assist in the development of new programs intended to serve the mutual interests of I.V. and our campus." What UCSB/IV needs is meaningful ways to make IV a safer and better place. UCSB needs to mitigate UCSB's negative impact on the area by taking action. Chancellor Yang needs to stop talking in bureaucratic clichés and talk about the real issues: sexual assaults, assaults, alcohol and drug abuse, and the out-of-control party scene which attracts the lowest common denominator to come to IV and party. How can Yang take effective action to reduce the problems when he can't even say the words that describe the problems, but rather resorts to obscure euphemisms like "mutual interests." He needs to make it a priority of his administration to elevate UCSB from its party school image and stop the criminal element associated with UCSB.

More information about the committee and its activities can be obtained at http://senate.ucsb.edu/ivcommission/. To date, the commission has not taken any action or made any reports.

To our knowledge, the only independent review of UCSB/IV was completed by a UC Berkeley professor in the early 1970s. That review was commissioned after the riots which caused the death of Kevin Moran. To our knowledge, the recommendations, many of them critical of UCSB, were completely ignored.

Yang says he is tough on crime and bad behavior but the numbers do not bear him out. The university maintains an Office of Judicial Affairs which has the responsibility of disciplining students who violate the university’s rules and regulations. In the last three years about 3,000 UCSB students were cited or arrested for criminal acts. Criminal acts (this does not include traffic violations) constitute conduct that would be considered a non-academic violation of the schools rules. During that time period UCSB took action against 23 students for non-academic infractions (this would be for criminal activity or violation of the UCSB rules). Only 17 of these actions resulted in suspension or dismissal. Seventeen dismissals out of almost 3,000 criminal acts do not indicate a tough administration. Additionally, literarily thousand, of what UCSB considers non-criminal acts (see last years Nexus and News Press articles on the dormitory evictions) go mostly unpunished.

This lack of enforcement is one of the things that perpetuates the, now international, belief that UCSB/IV is a "wide open college town.” The public's perception, not unjustly taken, is that UCSB/IV is tolerant of drugs, alcohol abuse, criminal behavior and out of control parties – this is the perception that devalues the UCSB degree and keeps UCSB from doing better in the national ratings.

The lack of enforcement by the administration was publicly highlighted last year when the president of the Associated Students was arrested for felony assault and misdemeanor assault. He was also cited for violation of his probation – he was still on probation from a criminal conviction garnered during his prior year at UCSB. While the felony assault occurred in November of 2004, UCSB took no action. He not only continued his education at UCSB, he remained as the A.S. president. What message does UCSB send when the president of the A.S. commits multiple crimes including a felony assault that sent a young man to the hospital and he not only remains in school but remains as the A.S. president for the entire year?

The vast majority of UCSB students are not the problem – 90% of them are great young people. It is the ten percent who abuse the community that Yang refuses to address. Moreover, in a lemming-like rush to be at the head of the non-judgmental line, Yang and even the good students fail to condemn conduct that is deleterious to their community and to the prestige of their university.

So, what is it going to be, Chancellor Yang? Are you going to move UCSB forward to higher levels or see the UCSB experience degenerate into one big out-of-control frat party?

As for the Dark Side, we will continue to hold Chancellor Yang accountable for the devaluation of the UCSB diploma so long as he continues to provide mere lip service to addressing the problems and all the while treads on the party school image to fill his coffers.