(2 of 2)
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."