Madeleine Lee

I started writing for The Bottom Line in the Fall of 2015. Our newsroom had five cramped desks and rats that scuffled in the ceiling. But in the Fall of 2016, we moved in a brand new couch. And on the walls, which I stared at often during late nights and early mornings, we had pinned three years worth of weekly issues. It was here in this newsroom that I grew most, as a person and as a reporter, editor, and writer. 

For two years as campus beat reporter, I was in constant contact with student leaders, administrators, and campus department heads. I spent my free time sniffing out stories and broke several of those included below. I covered sit-ins and campus meetings that lasted through the night, writing articles while I watched the sunrise. I pushed my writing to be more than just news, but something that was altogether informative and creative and fresh. I wrote for students and Isla Vista community members, trained new writers, and helped craft the voice and brand for a paper that wasn't afraid to adapt and redefine its place in the campus sphere and beyond. 

In my last month as an undergraduate at UCSB, I helped direct a team of 15 to put together a three year memorial issue for the 2014 Isla Vista shooting that occurred at the end of my freshmen year. The three page spread of stories can be viewed above. The story I wrote on the unsung heroes of the night can be read below. 

“Young lady, what are you doing reading Playboy?”

To that, I have no response. But for Kavi Alexander, a self-professed vigilante of hippie culture and a child of the sixties himself, this was an ironically conservative inquisition for a man who has, in the last sixty-seven years of his life, seen far more than the average Isla Vista resident.

As a West Coast transplant by way of Sri Lanka, Paris, Belgium and a brief stint in New York, Alexander has spent many an afternoon people-watching at the Isla Vista Food Co-Op since he first moved into his Abrego apartment, lined by palm trees and beer pong tables, in 1987. It was there, on the food co-op patio littered with fliers for upcoming yoga brunches and kombucha sales, that Alexander painted the picture of a life that is in fact, despite all its early spontaneity, dictated by two things: an old 1960s issue of Playboy magazine and a pair of speakers.

It was the magazine that emerged first, a much-coveted underground commodity of the rigid, all-boys boarding school Alexander begrudgingly attended in Sri Lanka. Hidden in desk drawers and under mattresses, Playboy was the minimally-dressed window into the chaos of the western world.

“It wasn’t in the pictures, obviously, that I found inspiration,” Alexander said, “but in the interviews and the short stories they used to include. There was one feature in particular that I remember on the Beatnik Generation. I read that article and it was like there was no looking back, really.”

Over 50 students filled the halls outside Chancellor Henry T. Yang’s Cheadle Hall office Wednesday night to address what they call a mishandling of Title IX sexual assault cases on campus. As of approximately 9:35 p.m., Yang had arrived at Cheadle to meet with participants of the sit-in, and began a meeting with the organizers an hour later.

Fourth year student Ro’shawndra Earvin led the sit-in, advocating on behalf of her own case, in which she says she was drugged and raped. Earvin said that her case had been rejected by the District Attorney’s office due to “insufficient evidence.” Earlier in the evening, Earvin shared with Associated Students Senators her lack of faith in the University of California system after she discovered that campus resources, including the UC Santa Barbara Police Department, were unable to handle her case because it occurred in Isla Vista.

“UCSB washed their hands of me just because I was raped in Isla Vista and not on campus,” Earvin said. “What does that mean for the resources that I should be allotted appropriately with the advocates that have my back?”

Though Earvin sought assistance from Campus Advocacy, Resources & Education, she did not feel that CARE officers were efficiently equipped to deal with the legalities of her case. Holding up a highlighted copy of her police report, Earvin pointed to a statement she said was riddled with inaccuracies. She said she did not believe the report accurately conveyed the truth of her case. The Bottom Line is in the process of contacting the SB Sheriff’s Department and the DA’s office for more information on this case.

With the approval of Chancellor Henry Yang, University of California, Santa Barbara administrators have rescinded the 45-day vacate notice issued to occupants of El Centro to the relief of students, faculty, and alumni.

Administrators issued the 45-day vacate notice after structural consultants determined the extent of foundational dry rot to be a “severe” life safety risk,according to UC seismic code. The decision to revoke the notice is the result of nearly two weeks of ongoing negotiation between administration and representatives of the cultural organization El Congreso, whose student and alumni members have operated out of El Centro since the early 1970’s.

Support came from numerous campus departments, including the Chicano Studies faculty and Educational Opportunity Program counselors, whose offices were once housed in the building, as well as from the Associated Students Senate who passed a resolution in support of the the building’s permanence last week.

“Because of the students’ strong concerns about finishing the academic year,” said Chancellor Yang in an email response to concerned UCSB and El Congreso alumna Yolanda Marquez, “we are prepared to provide temporary shoring around the perimeter of the building until we can provide a permanent fix.”

For parents of Isla Vista Elementary School students, the intersection at Storke and El Colegio Roads, bordered by the University of California, Santa Barbara’s student housing and I.V. Elementary School, is a familiar nightmare. At peak traffic hours, an estimated 500 vehicles, according to Stantec Consulting Services, join the slow crawl through the main thoroughfare that connects a sleepy I.V. to the real world.

Felipe Garcia, an I.V. resident and parent of two, has watched the intersection develop over the last twenty years. He remembers when it was still a one lane road, and welcomed the two lane expansion as commuter traffic increased.

But for UCSB’s latest construction project, Garcia, accompanied by an auditorium full of elementary school parents, was not pleased.

In an effort to accommodate the foot, bike and vehicle traffic of the 312 students expected to fill the San Joaquin Apartments—currently under construction—by fall 2016, UCSB Vice Chancellor of Administrative Services Marc Fisher and Santa Barbara County representatives presented their latest intersection design to I.V. Elementary parents and community members on Thursday evening.

I discovered, on a recent late-night stumble through Isla Vista, that when the gates of heaven greet you, they don’t glow like you would expect them to.

There isn’t much fanfare when you walk through them either, nothing there to punctuate your arrival except for the harsh sizzle of meat hitting the grill beneath plumes of grease scented smoke. And yet I stood in the middle of it all, staring upward at the panel of glowing menu boards that beamed down at me, and found myself far from underwhelmed. I floated to the counter and, smiling and teary-eyed, choked out my order.

“Buffalo chicken cheese fries, please.”

The cashier smiled.

I had found God in the middle of Isla Vista’s very own IV Deli Mart.

This sort of experience with the divine is not unique; IV Deli Mart has been guiding the masses to deep-fried salvation for twelve years now thanks to Michael Hasaan’s culinary vision, creativity and bravery — which is key, of course, to boasting a menu of such staggering girth and calorie content.