UCSB: Wrappin my head around it....

Poststructural Pub
1

Just got back from Parent/Student Orientation at UC Santa Barbara for the older son, who starts Sept 22. It was… educational.

I had heard about the dynamics of this campus, and now I seen it.

It’s a big single campus, wrapped around a lagoon on the coast, apparently built on a former military base. Lotsa new buildings, a pretty clean and safe campus, with truly, the most bicycles I have ever seen, so the kids can eschew petro-transport. Lots of research, and research internships, yet only 15% are grad students. Decent food and plenty of it. The best weather I could ever imagine and a place to enjoy sun and health in a casual setting.

But what makes it truly unique (I think) is the quivering fleshpot known as Isla Vista, the residential community nearby.

One square mile hugging a beach, demarcated by a University property dmz.. 20,000 people (the claim was made twice by college officials that it’s the densest urban setting west of the Mississippi). Greeks, apt. sharing, and so on. A 15-kegger party every Thursday night, $5 admission. The girls: the lowest tops and the highest shorts I have ever seen on a continuous basis, a virtual realization of everything I ever heard about SoCal women. The boys: mostly bros and retro hippies, it would SEEM. The joke about diversity: sure, we have diversity, 20 shades of blonde! But truly, there is plenty of diversity.

Now, I have never used the word “fleshpot” before, but bygawd, that is the closest thing I have ever seen to the concept. All that flesh, all that beer, all those young people packed elbow-to-elbow with fairly narrow streets. It;s like an out-patient dorm, giant-size. A coupla county sheriffs, but no urban authority, other than a county PARK district. No city council, nothin’. And of course, you may know the history of IV (that’s what they call it) with student protest movements of the 60s and 70s.

At Orientation, during the Drug and Alchohol portion of the presentation, I got the good news: a full 20% had NOT had alcohol in the past week, at the time of the survey. A mere 39% had smoked pot in the last week. But at least only 9% were regular tobacco users. It’s a kinda Lotus Land. The Dean of Letters and Sciences repeatedly mentioned graduating strategies to make students FINISH their stay at UCSB. The letter they get after 200 units urging them to steer towards a major. It’s like the Roach Motel, they all check in but nobody checks out. Or at least wants to.

And I’m sendin’ my kid there. Nyuk.

I am so old.

Gauchos, make me laugh some more with your comments. Fortunately, my kid is a hard head, very independent and I think he will do just fine and I like much of what I saw.

But truly, are there other circumstances like UCSB and the IV anywhere else? I have lived in the sphere of UC-Berkeley all of my life, and I thought it had an atmosphere of unreality, but UCSB is a trip.

2

I dunno weeks…can’t say we have anything of the sort at little St. Mary’s College of Maryland, population 1900…but it is a crunchy school as these things go.

Of course the first kid I sent off was a vegan tree-hugging enviro-geek before she ever left home, but the 2nd one has, in her 2 years, acquired a tendency to carry floppy quilted bags and dread-lock her boyfriend’s hair.

Can’t wait to see what happens to daughter #3, who starts in 2 weeks. She likes shopping, eating out, and wearing her clothes snug. The first two things will be scarce in rural St. Mary’s. They make their own fun. We’ll have to see what adaptations ensue with this kid who’s already stated an intention to marry rich. (Not sure who rich is, but I’m sure I didn’t marry his dad.)

3

Your experience sounds a bit like mine when the eldest daughter went to Virginia Tech-the big lecture from the college about the infamous “Blacksburg Crawl” ( it involves drinking at every bar in the space of one night) etc. and all the other fun and games that a huge campus can offer.

Thankfully she survived with her degree.

4

Where in the heck are the photos?

What’s wrong with you?

5

My niece went there about 10 years back, along with some of her high school friends. After a single semester, she returned home. She didn’t like the party scene, and her friends/roommates had jumped in headfirst. She said it was too hard to concentrate in the constant party atmosphere (worked out OK - she transfered into a local Cal State school and graduated in her major with no problems).

My older daughter (currently at UC Riverside) has visited friends at UCSB and has the same feeling you do - it’s a really nice school and location, but unless you’re very self-directed the parties could be an ongoing distraction. But she knows people who have done very well there, too.

So your son may do just fine.

Possible northern California party schools for comparison: Cal State Chico (my dad’s alma mater, and a perennial contender in Playboy Magazine’s list of “best party schools”) and Humboldt State (by repute, has strong programs in Forestry and, unofficially, Pot)

6

Well, reflecting on this campus versus others, it’s sorta like a suburb, where most drinking is done in private residences whereas in big cities, the kids have to go to dance places, pay covers and show ID and all. The Greeks don’t really have a big hold at SB, but the many apartments and cottages might at well be frat houses, the way people party and all. In the end, the arrangement really facilitates binge drinking.

Ironically, my son WANTED to go to a big city school, in the heart of Boston or Chicago, in proximity of theaters, especially improv, his “thing.”. But for the 10 places he applied, 3 accepted him. One, Emerson, is literally alongside the Boston Commons, but they had no interest in helping him out financial aid wise (and I think they missed out on a great student, but I’m not objective). The second, DePaul, was much more generous but after visiting the campus, he felt it was an awful lot like a big state university, even though he loves Chicago and wants to go to grad school somewhere there, someday.
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So he ended up in SB where he doesn’t have to borrow much and I don’t have to pay much. He’s happy that it worked out but he didn’t really want a school that was a community of its own. I’m sure he’ll find his place, but I hate to see him go through what happened at his high school, where, by the 10th grade, many of his friends turned to pot and more, leaving him isolated and a bit unpopular, despite his heavy theater work, newspaper work, etc. He’s no square, but he’s pretty canny about the apathy of pot or the dissembling effect of booze. I;m sure he’ll end up at some parties and experiment some, but he’s got a short fuse with the “bros” because he thinks they’re stupid. And he’s not too fond of the brisée girls, even though he certainly enjoys lookin’ at 'em.

I wish he’d coulda made it to Boston, even though it would have been a logistical nightmare. That’s a great town. Lotta drinkin’ too, of course, I realize.

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I kept droppin’ the camera. I couldn’t think straight and I was tortured by the idea that they could be my daughter, yet be so ogle-worthy.

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I attended UCSB in the mid 50s. The school had physically just moved from Santa Barbara and IV did not exist. I could walk from the campus to the town of Goleta to the only bar that side of SB (they did have a Foster’s Freeze also) and even a little further to Highway 101 where I could hitchhike to LA and meet my dad, who had an insurance office there. How times have changed. :smiley:

The school was very small and in the spring semester, when I was playing baseball (the basic reason for my going there), I lived in one of the one story barracks which housed Marine officers during WWII. The school was hardly an athletic powerhouse. They had one athletic scholarship which they decided to give to the best athlete in school. He happened to be from Santa Barbara and the scholarship covered his tuition for the semester, which was $50. Since he played basektball as well as baseball all he had to do was pay for books; as I recall he lived at home.

I flunked out after one year (funny how that happens when you don’t go to class) and it took me a long time to get my various degrees. When I applied for a doctoral program at UC Irvine the powers that be looked at my record and (rightly) asked why I thought I should be accepted at UCI after flunking out of UCSB. Then they thought about UCSB in the 50s (perhaps the sight of a grown man crying had something to do with it) and let me in.

UCSB is an absolutely beautiful place with some topnotch scholars but I’ve always felt much of the success or lack thereof of students is on them and not on the institution. Many, although not all, schools offer the student what it can. Not all are equal in the quality of their education but it really boils down to what the student wants to do with what they are offered. I blew it at UCSB but that was my fault, not the school’s.

As I recall, the girls were amazing then, too. Just not very many of them and even fewer who even looked at me. :frowning:

Sandy

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Great history, Sandy. Yeah, now there are more than 16,000 students, based on the fact that my kid’s incoming class is 4,200. The actual college has a feeling of newness, with nearly every building either new or rebuilt looking and there is a lot of construction there now. IV is kinda seedy, tho and it’s physically at a lower elevation than most of the school, which increases the sensation of…uh…slipping down the slippery slope.

The Dean claimed that it’s academic standing and prowess have grown, with four or five Nobel Prize winners all within the last 10 years or so… She kept saying that it is a Research school, whatever that means…

Acronyms, according to my son: UC Santa Cruz (University of Casual Sex and Cannabis) UCSB (Univ. of Casual Sex and Beer.)

10

All the University of California schools are now tough to get into because of the huge number of applicants and few open slots in comparison. So even though there is a party atmosphere, these are likely amongst some of the best and brightest kids in the state.

from
http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/admissions/eligibility.html

… only the top 12.5 percent of California high school graduates should be considered eligible for UC admission…

Top 1/8 is pretty good, even if they are drunk, half naked and/or stoned. It is still the top eighth and that is just to be considered, not a guarantee of admission.

Congrats.

11

Thanks, Bill!

Yeah, they kept reminding us of that. And since we were all together for the Welcome Assembly, it did seem like a bright bunch. That was feel-good.

So I tell myself that they study hard, then drink hard. Not only did the boy get in, he fulfilled most of his initial general ed through testing and AP classes. He only has to take a science class this year as far as I can understand. All those high school study late nights, especially in his junior year, then a challenging senior year, paid off.

His goal is to get a radio show at their station, insofar as extra-curricular. So we visited both the newspaper and the radio station. Both are independent from any curricular link, which surprised me. They don’t even have a journalism program at UCSB, though they have a daily paper with a total staff of 100. I thought that was weird. They do have a communications major and some work at the station, but it isn’t tied into the courses per se. I don’t get that at all.. .

He’s crashin’ a German class on top of his 15 units. He wants to go to Germany for his Junior year and study some of the heavy philosophy hitters/writers in their original language. I told him once that comprehension of those dudes is most likely a challenge even for native speakers, but what do I know (see sig line)?

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Santa Barbara means the holy barbarian, if you take both words to their roots.

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Location, Location, Location!

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I have fond memories of UCSB. I was living in L.A. and was having a long distance ( ok 90 miles) relationship back when I was in college. I’d drive up Saturday afternoon and try to make it back Sunday. I love the lagoon- sit on the grass and watch the sun go down. At one point they hosted the a banjo and fiddle contest. The grassy area in front of the lagoon was the main stage and there was music everywhere.