UCSB students were mostly on their best behavior this Halloween, with students from other schools and non-students accounting for the bulk of the arrests during the weekend’s festivities.

Lt. Sol Linver of the Isla Vista Foot Patrol said the IVFP made a total of 348 arrests during the period from the night of Friday, Oct. 29 to the early morning of Monday, Nov. 1. Of the 290 people booked for public intoxication over the weekend, 60 were UCSB students. Twenty-two said they went to Santa Barbara City College, 115 said they were students at other schools and 93 did not identify themselves as students, Linver said.

“Kudos go to the students of UCSB and SBCC,” Linver said. “For the most part, it looks like everyone partied very responsibly.”

The breakdown of the 393 citations handed out by the IVFP over Halloween weekend followed a similar trend, Linver said. He said a mere 27 UCSB students – just under 7 percent of the total citations for the weekend – and eight SBCC students received citations for offenses like being a minor in possession of alcohol or having an open container of alcohol in public.

Linver said students from other schools and non-students accounted for a combined 250 alcohol-related citations, which is more than 60 percent of all of the citations issued during the three-day period.

In 2003, more than a quarter of the 98 people arrested on Halloween were UCSB students.

Despite the higher number of arrests as compared to last year – which Linver said he attributes to this year’s two additional days of partying – Linver said the small percentage of UCSB students arrested shows they were on good behavior.

“When you look at the numbers, they did well,” Linver said. “It’s obvious to me that the UCSB students are familiar with the rules and laws in I.V., and the majority of them did a good job of following those rules.”

Linver said he was very pleased that the weekend was not a repeat of last year’s Halloween, which boasted an injury cliff fall and heavy vandalism to parked cars on Del Playa Drive. No one fell from the DP bluff tops this year, there were no serious injuries resulting from assaults and there was very little vandalism, Linver said.

“My goal was to keep it safe and responsible,” Linver said. “And I think this year we accomplished that goal.”

UCPD Officer Mark Signa said Halloween weekend was a quiet one on campus, with most of the festivities confined to I.V. He said the residence halls experienced very few problems, and he said he was impressed by the attitude of the crowds while he was on patrol in I.V.

“Overall, the weekend went really well,” Signa said. “The majority of students were very cooperative.”

Signa attributed the low number of local students arrested in part to the UCPD and UCSB’s education efforts, especially those directed at first-year students living in the dorms. He said their efforts paid off, and helped students who are new to Halloween in I.V. party responsibly and stay out of trouble.

“We’ll be doing a lot of the same things next year,” Signa said. “Hopefully we will see the same kind of results that we did this year.”

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