ucsb Tag

By now we’ve seen the headlines.  We’ve scrambled to make sense of a horrific act of violence that brought a quiet college town to its knees.  We’ve cursed, we’ve mourned and in the case of us Gauchos, we’ve stood together – wounded but unified – in the wake of unspeakable tragedy. Last Friday, a gunman drove through the UCSB beachside town of Isla Vista slaughtering six and wounding thirteen more before turning the gun on himself.  Hours before the event, he uploaded a video explaining the reasons for his attack. Read More

It happened again. But this time, it was more than just another tragic news story – at least for me. This past weekend’s events hit way too close to home. I’m a UCSB graduate. I’ve partied in the same streets and eaten at the same restaurants where a coward named Elliot Rodger murdered 6 innocent people whom he blamed for his own personal shortcomings. If this had taken place three years ago, I could have been a victim. My friends could have been victims. It’s pretty surreal for a collegeRead More

It was Senior year of college. I was stressed, but we were all stressed. I’d like to say I was more stressed than you were, but who am I to say such a thing? What I’m saying is I was stressed. And even more, I was getting fatter. It was terrible. I lived on the beach, but the thought of a bathing suit gave me more anxiety than the amount of shopping debt I’d gotten myself into. (I’m always in shopping debt and now Chase keeps calling trying to offerRead More

Tara Miele’s Thinspiration movie premiering this Saturday on Lifetime, Starving in Suburbia, follows a young dancer as she is slowly sucked into the world of anorexia and an online community run by the devastatingly mysterious ButterflyAna. Some of you may be wondering what thinspiration is (if you don’t know about it, consider yourself lucky!). The literal definition is “Photographs or other material intended to provide inspiration for anorexia nervosa as a lifestyle choice.” What this really means is there are thousands of images, websites, hashtags, twitter handles all dedicated to supporting and promotingRead More

College life has always carried a certain image.  Sure, there’s the prestige, honor and the promise of higher learning, but deep down we all think of one thing whenever our alma mater is brought up. Blame National Lampoon, Revenge of the Nerds or any movie ever made about college, but overall, the media presents the best four years of our lives as the most wasted years of our lives.  Depending on who you are, where you are, or what frat you’re in, that may or may not be the truthRead More

As of Monday, The LA Times published an article condemning a resolution passed by the UC-Santa Barbara Academic Senate intended to ensure that students would receive notice of “triggering” content before it appears in a classroom. The title of this article is “Warning: College students, this editorial may upset you.”   …I am upset. Upset at the victim-blaming that this perpetrates. Upset at the lack of sympathy for our fellow humans who have undergone traumatic events. Upset at the manner in which the writer dismisses the need for trigger warningsRead More