Hector Sanchez Castaneda
Isla Vista Beat Reporter
Illustration by Robert Perez, Staff Illustrator
For the second year in a row, Halloween in Isla Vista was a quiet affair. Only this time, weather played no part in it. Instead, a joint effort by students, community members and law enforcement maintained a peaceful and festive environment throughout the streets.
The largest crowd that materialized consisted of 500 people, less than the several thousand from 2014, and considerably less than the 12 to 15 thousand that rocked IV in 2013’s Halloween festivities, according to a press release from the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office (SBCSO).
Approximately 200 police officers were deployed for the weekend — 100 from SBCSO and 100 from the University of California Police Department. Preliminary results show that the weekend resulted in 28 misdemeanor arrests, 16 citations and seven medical transportations, all far less than previous years.
The Office of the External Vice President for Local Affairs (EVPLA) hosted and organized a series of events aimed at keeping Halloween safe for UC Santa Barbara students and Isla Vista community members, including activities like scavenger hunts, trick-or-treating at local businesses and gatherings at the Pardall Center.
“Based on what I saw, and on what others have told me, Halloween this year was a success,” third year history of public policy major and EVPLA Paola Dela Cruz said. “I loved how the events that we had really informed students about the ordinances and [the effort to] really trying to shift the culture of IV [by] including familias and long term residents.”
The scavenger “haunt” started on Mon., Oct. 26 and lasted up until Sat., Oct. 31. The EVPLA Office hid mason jars around IV, and posted clues to their location on their Facebook event page. Prizes inside the jars ranged from shirts to Delirium concert tickets.
“We would post the hints for the mason jar, [and] within a minute or two they would find them,” Dela Cruz said. “It was students actively going on the page and were super super interested in the mason jars … the businesses collaborated and said ‘Yeah of course, I’ll give you the t-shirt. I’ll give you this gift certificate.’”
But the main event for the weekend was Associated Students Program Board’s (ASPB) Delirium Concert. After it was announced that Snoop Dogg would headline Saturday night’s concert, students went into a frenzy, and six-hour lines formed in front of the AS and Theater and Dance ticket offices. A black market based around Snoop Dogg ticket vouchers sprang up on the Facebook group Free & For Sale, after the vouchers were given without any identification required to people who had waited in line for several hours. Even after the many heated debates on the page on whether or not tickets were subsidized by student fees and the morality of the free market, students were given a night to remember.
“Delirium was definitely an awesomely successful event,” fourth year communication major and ASPB Commissioner Chrystal Anderson wrote in an email to The Bottom Line. “We’ve had this event for two years now, and we think that seeing the students support this kind of alternative event shows that students want another option besides the parties that IV offers during Halloween weekend.”
“We don’t want students to not enjoy Halloween,” Dela Cruz said. “We just want students to do it in a very safe way — and that’s exactly what happened [this weekend].”