Police presence during Deltopia will continue to decline this year following dropping attendance levels over the past three years.
UCPD will have approximately 70 police officers patrolling Isla Vista this weekend, UCPD spokesperson Sgt. Rob Romero said. He said they will be predominantly from southern California UC campuses such as UCLA, UC Irvine, UC San Diego and UC Riverside.
Sgt. Romero said UCPD had approximately 100 police officers at Deltopia last year.
This year will also be the first year that UCPD is not installing fencing along El Colegio Road and around residence halls, as the Nexus previously reported.
Kelly Hoover, spokesperson for the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office, said she could not disclose how many officers the Sheriff’s Office will be sending into I.V. this weekend for “safety and security reasons.” She said, however, that there will be less law enforcement personnel than in years past.
Hoover said the Sheriff’s Office will keep its crowd-control horses “on standby” this weekend, as it did last year.
“There will still be a strong law enforcement presence. There hasn’t been a dramatic reduction in staff, but we are responding to what we’re seeing, which is a lower number each year, dramatically lower,” she said. “It would be a bit unreasonable to have an unnecessary number of law enforcement in Isla Vista.”
Police said Deltopia 2016 had a maximum attendance of 3,500 people, a significant decrease from 10,000 attendees in 2015 and 25,000 attendees in 2014.
The Sheriff’s Office recorded 48 citations and 45 arrests during Deltopia last year, down from 140 citations and 102 arrests in 2015. There were 190 citations and 130 arrests during Deltopia 2014, police said.
The county festival ordinance will be in place this weekend, prohibiting residents from playing amplified music between 6 p.m. and 7 a.m. from Friday to Monday.
Volunteers from UCIV, a group formed by the Associated Students Public Safety Commission, will ring doorbells and warn Isla Vistans against violating the festival ordinance to prevent police encounters.
UCSB spent approximately $36,000 on advertisements urging partygoers to stay away from I.V. during Deltopia weekend, university spokesperson Andrea Estrada said Tuesday.
Estrada said $1,410 of that amount purchased two print ads in the Nexus and $347 purchased an online ad with Mustang News, the student newspaper at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. UCSB’s Office of Public Affairs projects said it has spent approximately $34,000 for digital ads on Facebook, Pandora and Instagram running in areas from San Diego to Paso Robles.
The university will be enforcing parking restrictions during the weekend. Campus parking officials will be closing all parking lots except Lots 22, 18 and 16.
Visitors will not be allowed to park in UCSB lots from 11 a.m. Friday to 7:30 a.m. Monday. Only drivers with valid permits are authorized to park on campus.
The university will also be enforcing a no-guest policy in residence halls from 12 p.m. Friday to 12 p.m. Monday.
Students will host several alternative programs in and around I.V. during the weekend, including roller skating at the Recreation Center and a concert featuring popular EDM artist RL Grime at the Thunderdome.
Ashcon Minoiefar, Associated Students External Vice President of Local Affairs, said there are talks of making Deltopia a sanctioned event. He said, however, that for now, residents want it to be a locals-only celebration with programming developed around it.
“This Deltopia seems … to be the mark point where, if this goes well, then people are really going to start considering what’s next,” he said. “I think after this year, there’ll be a lot more changes, and I think [we] will have an ability to develop new ways of approaching it.”
A version of this story appeared on p. 1 of the Thursday, April 6, 2017, edition of the Daily Nexus.
Good just wasting $40,000 on advertising not to come to UCSB. Because the students have no self control. Plus all the other money that the school spends to bring other alternative parties, police, overtime and etc. that could be much better spent if the students had any modicum of restraint
Students are going to party – end of story.
Who cares if some friends from out of town show up?
How about 40k dispersed equally to UCSB students,spring scholarships vs on advertising?