Editor, Daily Nexus,

The Dark Side (www.thedarksideofucsb.com) wanted to show people, particularly parents of incoming freshmen, what the party scene in Isla Vista looked like. We hired someone to film the party scene last spring. When I wrote an article titled “Take a Step in the Dark,” (Daily Nexus, April 10) I believed that all the video was shot during the spring of 2005. I was wrong. The video did, in fact, contain some footage from a Halloween evening.

While it is not very instructive to review how I made the mistake (I goofed), it is instructive to review how the matter got corrected.

We received a lot of e-mails and postings that amounted to little more than screaming obscenities at us for showing the video. We always get this small minority of “outraged” party animals who believe they have an unfettered right to wreak havoc upon I.V. These writers need to learn that when you write hateful and profane screeds, few people pay attention – we did not.

However, in addition to the hate mail, we received several messages and postings that pointed out, with specificity, that some of the video was from Halloween. These writers included a degree of specificity that prompted us to review the matter. They believed that the portion of our video that showed the cops on horses proved that the videos were filmed on Halloween.

These cogent complaints caught my attention. I contacted the Sheriff’s office to confirm the fact that horses are only used during Halloween. I also contacted the person that did the editing of our videos and he ultimately confirmed that he had mixed in some Halloween footage.

I would like to thank the readers who took the time to inform us with well-reasoned comments that clearly pointed out the mistake. We have corrected the editorial on our website.