New Campus Stepchildren

More and more U.S. colleges have quit mothering students, freeing them to live off campus. The result is a new political-academic stepchild: the "student community." Such incubators of the counterculture raise complex questions for university and town authorities and for the students themselves. The largest and most volatile is Isla Vista, abutting the University of California at Santa Barbara. Last spring, "I.V." erupted in three major riots that produced a burned-out Bank of America branch, one death and nearly 1,000 arrests. Most campuses have been relatively calm lately, but two weeks ago a bomb damaged the roof of the rebuilt bank building. After a recent visit to Isla Vista, TIME'S Education Correspondent Gregory H. Wierzynski sent this report:

It would not have taken a planning genius to predict the result when Santa Barbara quadrupled its enrollment in ten years. Unable to get federal loans fast enough for building dormitories on campus, the university let students live in Isla Vista. The sleepy beach town became the home of 7,400 Santa Barbara students--54% of the enrollment --plus 4,000 nonstudents. The population density in I.V.'s half square mile is the highest in California. Two-thirds of the inhabitants are under 22.

Local Totem. Superficially, I.V. still has the old hippie beguilement. Barefoot boys and braless girls pedal past on bicycles, mill joyously on the streets, hang around the local totem--an American flag-topped heap of wooden planks and tree trunks known as "the earth art market."

A closer look reveals shabbiness. Isla Vista resembles a hip version of the towns near military bases thrown up to house and often gouge transient servicemen's families. Built like cheap motels, some apartments come with peeling paint and broken plumbing.

As an antidote to the uncertainties of their free-form life, some young people pursue mystical religions. Pot smoking is almost universal. I.V. has 50 to 100 heroin addicts; one night last summer, two youngsters sleeping on a nearby beach were hacked to death by unknown marauders. With an atmosphere reminiscent of William Golding's Lord of the Flies, Isla Vista is isolated, in spirit as well as in fact. People over 30 are practically nonexistent. Bus service to Santa Barbara is inconvenient and irregular. Since most of the residents are too young to vote, inexperienced in politics or both, I.V. is a powerless political backwater. It long had governmental services to match: one stop light for 6,000 cars, no public parks, inadequate street lighting, few sidewalks, no hospital, out-of-touch police.

The university's legal powers are lim ited because the community is not on its property. When administrators finally backed a building code and tighter zoning regulations for I.V., they were opposed by an ironic alliance of freedom-seeking students and landlords hungry for student rents. As a result, the county board of supervisors rejected the code, and later blocked a university attempt to put two dorms within I.V.

These days the Isla Vista community is becoming sophisticated about self-government. The students have begun a unique effort to take the enclave's development in hand. Joe Godwin, 27, a bearded, bouncy anthropologist, has organized an Isla Vista Community Service Center. The Bank of America has put up $25,000 for expenses. The center's heart is a clinic run by Dr. David Bearman, 29, a veteran of Haight-Ashbury clinics. He dispenses contraceptives, treats VD and bad drug trips.

About 40 cooperative enterprises have sprung up. There is a credit union, a food coop, a "people's patrol" that helps thwart petty crimes and serves as a buffer when regular police come in, and a legal aid office. A gas station has been taken over by students and renamed "people's petroleum." The most important of the new organizations: an unofficial city council that coordinates the volunteer groups and lobbies before the regular county board.

Student Turf. One apparent payoff is a new Isla Vista tolerance for the police. Residents cooperated in the search for the recent bank bombers, and two young suspects with no apparent political motive were quickly rounded up. Somewhat belatedly, the university has joined the I.V. reformers, appointing an ombudsman and a full-time I.V. coordinator. The California regents recently voted to spend $600,000 in Isla Vista during the next two years. Planning will consume $50,000. Some of the funds wilt purchase a vacant lot that I.V.ers turned into a park. Nonetheless, Chancellor Vernon Cheadle still seems baffled by the I.V. phenomenon. "If we had to do it all over again," he says. "I don't know what we could or should have done better."

For both university administrators and students everywhere, "doing something" is indeed difficult. Some campuses have avoided the Isla Vista pattern by creating coed dormitories that tend to stem the student exodus. In most places, colleges can neither require students to go back to dorms nor dictate dormitory-type rules for student turf. They can. however, keep in touch with their off-campus students, and lobby for sound local government. "Nobody is seeking a return to the idea of in loco parentis," says Mike Tejeda, 26, a six-year Isla Vista resident who is now a senior. "But the university must realize that Isla Vista is here because the university is here, and it should stand up and use its influence on behalf of the community."

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