The following article was taken directly from UCSB and Daily Nexus alumnus Tony Pierce’s blog, busblog. It first appeared on busblog on Monday, November 2nd. The Nexus was given permission to publish this article as an op-ed by Tony Pierce. You can see the article in its original form here: http://busblog.tonypierce.com/2015/11/500-people-walked-around-isla-vista-on-halloween.html
dear students of ucsb
no one forced you to go to the greatest party school in the world.
you coulda gone to cal poly. you coulda applied at long beach state.
dont laugh, they have a fucking pyramid at long beach state.
instead you chose UCSB. U Can Study Buzzed.
and on top of that you paid much money to live in Isla Vista. greatest town there ever was.
it’s great because it’s close to the beach, everybody’s beautiful, and the best parties are thrown there. legendary ones that cant even be mentioned because words are just dumb sounds compared to what goes down on dp, sabado, trigo and the others.
frats are a joke, but especially so in 93117 because besides the town being super fun, the people who go to school there wisely reject the idea that you have to buy your friends and lose your individuality in a bizarre struggle of forced acceptance.
fuck. that. shit with a 6 foot beer bong hanging from a rickety balcony.
you have your entire life to be a boring disgusting sellout
terrified of offending this one or that one.
you will have decades upon decades to dress like a bozo and say yes to things that inside you dont agree with one bit.
but when you’re in college you get to lose yourself while you find out who you are.
it’s the expansion and contraction of the universe. and the universe is you.
you get to grow your hair like you want, kiss who you want, dance like you want, think all the things youve never thought before, be in bands, try new clubs, eat new foods, meet new people
and best of all dress up as something obnoxious, slutty or hilarious and walk down isla vista’s main street with your friends on Halloween
and laugh and laugh and laugh.
and laugh.
unless you totally fuck up and forget you’re free.
you live in america, fellow gauchos, the land of the free and the home of the brave.
it is not brave to sit back and let the so called law tell you you cant play music after a certain hour.
it is not brave to watch cops year after year come in to your town and treat you like youre some criminal, like you did something horribly wrong, like you are some slimy kid with no rights or lesser rights or temporary rights
you have exactly the same rights as anyone else in this whole country.
for example you have the same rights as the 100,000 people who came to West Hollywood on Halloween and dressed up and laughed and drank and smoke and made out and, you know fucking had a Halloween.
three people were arrested in West Hollywood during the biggest bash in all of LA saturday night.
28 people were arrested in Isla Vista despite only 500 of you walking around town.
how is that possible?
it’s possible because you are allowing it to be possible.
it is possible because you are listening to the losers who tell you bullshit like “it is what it is”
we’d be speaking french german or spanish if this country believed in “it is what it is” and thank God above we dont.
we are americans, we are gauchos, and we are free.
trust me, there will be more than enough opportunity for you to bend over to fear and take it and pretend it isnt totally humiliating
for this brief period of your youth, i beg you,
party.
sure, some of you may die.
but right now, hardly any of you are living.
I love it an agree… I think the year before my freshman year (or two years before) there were like 30,000 some people in IV and something like 1,000 arrests. Beginning in 1994 or 1995, they started bringing in all sorts of cops. But I digress, people still partied. I don’t recall if they had the noise ordinance at that time – I think they did. I think it all comes down to demographics. When I went to UCSB, there was something like a 60-70% acceptance rate. UCSB actually has smart kids now. Smart kids don’t party as much and… Read more »
The university and others in authority (police, local government, etc) treat IV and UCSB students in a very paternal manner. But to be fair, UCSB students allow it. Here are several example, in addition to the ones cited in the article: * The university notifies the parents of adults that their adult offspring got arrested whether it occurred on campus or in IV. * The police conduct underage alcohol stings by entering the residences in Isla Vista and posing as guests. Would they ever infiltrate a wedding up in the hills of SB? I very much doubt it. * The… Read more »
Haha there’s no way you would have been accepted here in the 2010’s. Stop trying to relive the last time your life didn’t suck through us. We’re busy.
b wrote: “Haha there’s no way you would have been accepted here in the 2010’s. Stop trying to relive the last time your life didn’t suck through us. We’re busy.” Busy doing what? Bending over for the cops? Not playing music after 6pm? Allowing he “law” to trample over your rights and freedoms? Busy being too scared to put your full name next to your lame retorts? If you’re so much smarter than me, what are your suggestions for getting Halloween back to IV? I just gave you mine. Or are you one of those “smart kids” who only knows… Read more »
Tony, they’re not just scared. They’re stressed. Too stressed to party like we did. Too much pressure to conform and compete. Too stressed to give the administration the middle finger every once in a while. It’s why they take social shelter in fraternities and sororities. I’m still on campus a couple times a week for board meetings, etc. The vibe is different. These students actually study and believe that their long-term goals that require them sacrificing all fun in the near term. I’ve got news for you kids … this is possibly the best four (or five if you work… Read more »
It’s one weekend. Every other weekend is the same as always.
Oh and my suggestion to “get Halloween back to IV” is to wait until another generation of students gives a fuck about getting Halloween back to IV. The current crop of students seems to be much more interested in getting Halloween and Deltopia OUT of IV and keeping it local. We don’t want what you want. Cops or no cops, you’re still projecting your own desires onto a group of people who have nothing to do with you.
B, “Haha there’s no way you would have been accepted here in the 2010’s. Stop trying to relive the last time your life didn’t suck through us. We’re busy.” Wow, smug much? You have no clue, dude. You’ve been running the rat race since kindergarten, or maybe pre-K – running on the damned wheel for so long you don’t know any other way. From your caged and coddled perspective, a 5.0 GPA and perfect SAT or whatever damned standardized test they enforce now, equals “smart.” When, for most of you NOT out there enjoying life, you’ll be so busy digging… Read more »
Nice try but I’m a returning student. I barely squeaked a 3.0 out of high school and got an average SAT score (out of 1600 because I’m old). Then I dropped out of the one mediocre college I got accepted to. I’ve never dipped a toe in the rat race let alone participate, and I’ve already had my fun youth AND my soulless grownup life. I hope you enjoyed typing up that cute little lecture though. I know this is very confusing to you geniuses and I’ve repeated it several times, but it’s totally possible to have fun and make… Read more »
this sux
UCSB becomes a serious school? For the love of the almighty dollar are you kidding me? Students that actually study then graduate and (if they are smart) move out of CA and land a great job? Yeah, that makes no sense at all. Lets all get stoned and stumbling drunk instead.
As an alumni, I totally agree with the spirit of this letter. You will have plenty of time to live in the real world once you get out. Get it out of your system, and really enjoy yourself. I have seen Isla Vista for the last 20 after I graduated, and still miss those times in my life. Discover life and go crazy, and of course its a balance that you need to learn in order to be responsible!!
Meh.
As an alum (’92), I resent the implication that “UCSB has smart kids now” and “you wouldn’t have been accepted here.” My iteration of UCSB had some brilliant scholars, great academicians. So, get off your high horses, current students – you really aren’t special – you are just the product of a different time. You can have balance in your collegiate experience. You can study hard and you can party hard (either with or without alcohol). You do need is to cut loose, to put the books away for a while and go interact with human beings. To be in… Read more »
IV is the same as it’s always been. Halloween is one weekend and people still managed to have a great time without half of California coming to visit. You don’t know what you’re talking about.
Once again, b, you’re talking out of your ass. How on Earth would you know what IV has “always been” like? You weren’t even born when many of us and 40,000 of our closest friends were parading down DP on Halloween. You have no clue what that was actually like. And stop with the BS of “and people still managed to have a great time” the other weekend. 500 people walked around YOUR town and 28 were arrested? That’s the opposite of fun unless you’re some bored cop. ARE YOU SOME BORED COP, B? You know so little about fun… Read more »
I live here now and you lived here 20 years ago. I’m aware of the fact that IV is as much a party town now as it has ever been. You think Halloween is somehow a reflection of some big change in IV culture. It’s really not. We’re tired of tens of thousands of people coming, trashing our town, and making us look bad in the news. We have fun with or without them. Yeah there were a lot of cops, and for the first time since I’ve been here, their presence DIDN’T feel oppressive. They were hanging out, talking… Read more »
This article presents a very, very narrow vision of how college students can expand their minds and learn about themselves. Partying is not the only way to do that. In fact, for many, the party culture is stifling and even unsafe. I’m much more interested in fighting for a woman’s right to walk around at night without being raped or yelled at like she’s a piece of meat, for example, than my right to get shit faced drunk. For the people at UCSB who are not straight white males there’s a lot more fucked up shit going on impeding their… Read more »
Beautiful response, perfectly captures my own reaction to this posting. Getting intoxicated and dancing en mass is fun but is nothing compared to building deep relationships and actually working in the community for progessive change that carries to the real world outside of college. Its not about “getting a 4.0” as one alumnus so glibly put it. If these former students truly feel that these insular college years were the highlight of their life I can’t feel anything but pity for them.
I disagree with B’s comment that “there’s no way you would have been accepted here in the 2010’s.” It’s all relative… I studied enough in high school and got good enough grades to get into college. If the stakes were higher and getting into college was more competitive, we would have likewise studied more and gotten better grades. Plus, our tuition was a lot less than yours was and we have better jobs than you guys will get. What do you think about that!