Grief Ripples Outward

The name Elliot Rodger will not be forgotten on the Platinum Coast for a long time. Rodger joins David Attias on the short list of disturbed people who have rampaged in the student oasis – or ghetto, depending on one’s point of view and financial wherewithal – of Isla Vista. Rodger did far more damage, killing seven and injuring another thirteen in ten minutes of mayhem. He fatally stabbed three young men in his apartment; was Rodger adept with a knife, able to target vital organs with a single thrust, or did he wield the blade indiscriminately, slashing and cutting in a frenzy of violence? Although it’s morbid in the extreme, I try to imagine that crime scene, the enormous amount of blood. But that wasn’t enough to satiate Rodger, who next turned to his car and his guns, the latter all purchased legally and registered.

Premeditated murder, perversely documented in a hundred-plus page manifesto, and reinforced in heart chilling YouTube posts that are difficult to watch. Young Elliot told the world what he was planning to do, and then he went and did it, before putting a round into his own cranium. Grief ripples outward from Isla Vista. Dozens of lives are altered forever: mothers, fathers, siblings, friends, and relatives. The clock froze on Friday night, stuck on the hour and minute that Rodger set out to fulfill his twisted promise, to avenge those he held responsible for his alienation and loneliness. Six innocent UCSB students in the wrong place at the wrong time are dead.

Yes, grief ripples outwards from Isla Vista, through the lecture halls of UCSB, and the common places where students gather to relax and hang out.

2013-2014 has been a terrible academic year for UCSB, with brutal sexual assaults, the Deltopia riot, and now the deadly madness of Elliot Rodger. A curse has fallen on Isla Vista, the dense student community with orphan political status, unwanted by the City of Goleta or the County of Santa Barbara. As reporter Nick Welsh pointed out in a piece for the Santa Barbara Independent, our local weekly paper, Isla Vista no longer plays host exclusively to UCSB students. Our award winning community college – Santa Barbara City College – a school that feeds students into the UC system, with many going on to UCSB, is not only successful at drawing students from California, but also from foreign countries, allowing the college to capture the high tuition and fees foreign students pay for the privilege, that SBCC has contributed to a dearth of affordable student housing, which has pushed many SBCC students into the human cauldron that is Isla Vista.

Politicians and pundits will make the usual pious speeches, offer prayers for the dead and the wounded and their families, but the prospects for sensible handgun control legislation will remain as remote as Mars; the NRA will ramp up its PR machine and silence any politician who has the temerity to voice support for action on handgun control; even if a bill is introduced, by the time it winds through the process of legislative bribery it will be so toothless as to be worthless. Isla Vista will join Columbine and Aurora, Colorado and Sandy Hook and Virginia Tech and Fort Hood in our national hall of shame and cowardice.