Brooke Sperbeck, Benjy Egel and Aja Frost
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Graphic communication junior Sam Burt went to Isla Vista on Memorial Day Weekend to visit his friend at Santa Barbara City College.
Burt stayed in a friend’s apartment on the corner of Del Playa Drive and El Embarcadero Road — the same area a gunman took to on Friday night, killing six people and injuring 13 more.
When the shooting began down the street from the apartment, Burt and his friend heard “popping noises,” which they initially thought were fireworks, he said.
“I ran outside on his balcony, and the popping was getting louder, but on a really consistent pace and a weird pace,” Burt said. “So I said, ‘That’s not normal.’”
Just one of the several college students near the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), Burt was witnessing what would soon become international news.
Elliot Rodger, a 22-year-old Santa Barbara City College student, rampaged across the streets in Isla Vista, firing at multiple people from his BMW before eventually crashing his car and fatally shooting himself, according to Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown.
The gunman posted a 141-page manifesto online before the shooting, in which he swore to bring revenge on the women of Santa Barbara who had turned down his advances.
In the attacks, Rodger killed two Delta Delta Delta sorority members, as well as a UCSB student in a delicatessen and three UCSB students at his home.
In a campus-wide email sent Monday afternoon, Cal Poly administrators expressed their sadness over the event and said they had reached out to UCSB Chancellor Henry T. Yang, offering assistance “in whatever way needed.”
According to Keith Humphrey, vice president for Student Affairs, UCSB has not yet requested any help, but that could change in the coming days.
“Having worked on a campus that has had a shooting, it is hard to determine in the first few days what you need — it all happens so fast,” Humphrey wrote in an email to Mustang News. “After a few additional days, staff like counselors, police and other student support need a break to be able to do their best work and often that’s when reinforcements are needed. Cal Poly will remain ready to respond and help UCSB as it requests.”
Though UCSB is often seen as Cal Poly’s rival, art and design senior Jared Moore was struck by the similarities between the schools in the wake of Friday’s shooting. Moore created a picture of the ocean with the words “rivals,” “opponents” and “competitors” crossed out, replaced with the slogan “We are neighbors. You are in our thoughts Santa Barbara,” with the UCSB logo at the top and the Cal Poly logo at the bottom of the image.
Moore set the photo as his Facebook profile picture, inspiring some of his friends to do the same. The photo has spread through social media, offering Cal Poly students an opportunity to express their condolences.
“I felt really touched by it being so close. It’s not something that happened across the country. In the big-picture grand scheme of things, it’s just another small coastal college beach town just like here,” Moore said. “In reality, they’re the same as us. It could have easily been here.”
Much of the mainstream media coverage of the shooting has focused on the suspect, whose chilling video and murderous manifesto have gone viral.
Moore said he was disappointed to see the lack of coverage given to the six dead and 13 injured victims, not to mention the effect the massacre has had on the campus as a whole.
The graphic, which took approximately an hour to create, was intentionally designed not to give attention to the gunman.
“I wanted to represent that coastal community that we have where we’re neighbors, we’re humans, we’re people and we’re students,” Moore said. “I saw people sharing the video and picture of (the suspect’s) face, so I put something out hoping that if you were touched by (the shooting), you weren’t obliged to share something like that.”
Rodger’s original plan, according to his manifesto, was to target UCSB’s Alpha Phi sorority. To show its support, Cal Poly’s chapter of Alpha Phi reached out to its sisters at UCSB after two women — neither of whom were members of Alpha Phi — were shot and killed on its chapter house’s front lawn, biochemistry junior and Cal Poly Alpha Phi President Bryce Gassner said.
“We did reach out to them and just said to them that we were glad to hear that every member was accounted for, and that if they needed anything from us that we’re here from them, being the closest chapter to them,” Gassner said.
Gassner said she had not heard back from members of UCSB Alpha Phi. Her sorority’s international chapter reported that all members of UCSB Alpha Phi had been accounted for after the shooting, she said.
Cal Poly Alpha Phi has not yet made further plans to reach out to the UCSB chapter, Gassner said.
“Since this is so new, we haven’t made any moves yet,” Gassner said. “We’re waiting to hear more information and hear back more from our internationals, so once we get more information on everything, then we’ll kind of know what we want to do.”
Gassner said one member of Cal Poly Alpha Phi was in Santa Barbara visiting friends at UCSB on Friday night when the shootings occurred.
“Luckily, she was safe,” Gassner said. “She got to an indoor location right away and reached out (to) everyone on our Facebook page about it.”
Burt, who was also visiting at the time, said the mood in Isla Vista completely changed after the shots were fired.
“There were people next to the house that had music playing and were laughing and playing games,” he said. “It went from that to deathly quiet, people screaming and crying.”
The gunman circled the block twice before crashing his car down the street from the apartment where Burt was staying.
Burt and his friend went outside multiple times to check to see if the gunman was still in the area, he said.
“The third time, he crashed six houses down, and that’s when police were running around the corner with guns drawn telling everyone to get inside,” Burt said.
Burt said he is thankful his friends in Isla Vista are safe. With more than 400 rounds of ammunition unused by the killer, the death toll could have been much worse.
“I’m just glad that there weren’t any more injuries or deaths, because with the amount of bullets this guy was shooting, there could have been at least 30 people dead,” Burt said. “There’s just some things that you never expect to see in your lifetime. Going down to Santa Barbara this last weekend, I never expected to see body bags in the street.”