It is hard to believe a decade has passed. It feels both so close in time and so long ago.  My partner and I were almost struck by the perpetrator’s car that night and I still remember it all so vividly. But that’s not the memory I choose to focus on. Instead the images I choose to fill my head and heart with are the moments of love, hugs, warmth, kindness, compassion and selflessness when the community came together at that time — and still does today. That love was on full display at the spontaneous memorial sites where strangers hugged and consoled each other, left flowers, lit a candle and shared a memory.

At the urging of my undergraduate students, I approached the UCSB library about saving the items left at the spontaneous memorial sites and documenting the campus and community responses to the tragedy. The library agreed and rose to the challenge, and in partnership with student affairs I was able to spearhead the team effort to create a memorial archive, a physical exhibit of artifacts for the one year remembrance anniversary, and then later a digital exhibit for the five year anniversary. The exhibit was called “We Remember Them: Acts of Love and Compassion in Isla Vista,” It was a space for healing and reflection that honored the acts of love and compassion that emerged in Isla Vista and on the UCSB campus after the tragedy. Through photographs of planned and unplanned memorials, artifacts and messages left at spontaneous memorial sites, and documentation of support from around the globe, the exhibition remembered those who died or were injured, and told the story of a community empowered by its own humanity in reacting to a collective loss. The exhibit was a student-run endeavor that was created in close consultation with the families and friends of the victims.The online exhibition was designed to recreate the feeling of walking through physical exhibit space and can be accessed online at  https://islavistamemorialproject.omeka.net/exhibits/show/werememberthem

All of this work has been incredibly meaningful and I’m so proud of everyone who worked so hard to bring these projects to fruition. The most important thing to me has always been the work I’ve been able to do with the families of the victims in creating our exhibit, bringing the Isla Vista Love & Remembrance Garden into existence, and fighting for common sense gun reform. More than ever we must continue to fight for a country and world free of gun violence and sexual violence against women, and demand #NotOneMore

My niece, my brother’s oldest and only girl, Veronika, was born in Seattle’s Swedish Hospital on February 24, 1995, during the week of her parents’ first anniversary. Veronika always considered Seattle her home. She was a devoted Husky, Mariner, and Seahawk fan. She loved Seattle’s cloudy, rainy, drab days, and she visited at least once a year to spend time with me, her grandmother, her other aunt, her cousin, and in 2012, her twin baby second cousins.

   Veronika began college in September 2013 at UCSB with so much excitement. She actually had a huge countdown calendar on her bedroom wall at home, and she posted updates online.  Once school started, I regularly received texts, almost always beginning with, “How’s the weather?” which I learned was to be code for “Starbucks, please.” I spent my February break in 2014 in Santa Barbara so I could spend time with Veronika for her 19^th birthday. Because of college expenses, she hadn’t made it to Seattle the previous Christmas. Veronika loved showing me around her new home. We went out to dinner with her mom and dad for her birthday. She spent a good deal of that dinner taunting her brothers with texts about Tony Romo, who was sitting at the next table with a large group. With such confidence, Veronika walked over to his table and asked for a birthday picture with him. She was a total Seahawk fan, and Seattle had just won the Superbowl just a couple weeks earlier.

   I miss Veronika’s wit, her bright and thoughtful intelligence, her snorting laughter, and her deep intuition. She was fierce. She is forever 19.

No one living in Isla Vista during the May 23rd tragedy will ever forget that night and the days that followed. It’s difficult to describe: it feels like a blur, like an out-of-body experience.

It was a Friday toward the end of the school year, Memorial Day Weekend, and it started out like an ordinary and relatively calm night. At first, I got word that gun shots had been fired, something that sadly wasn’t totally uncommon at the time, and then of casualties but with no confirmations of who or how many were hurt. The town was on shutdown as first responders handled the situation. Facebook and texts became the hubs where people connected to check on each other and to find out what had happened. I was hundreds of miles away with almost no phone service but desperate to contact my friends and learn about what might have happened. 

The next day, Associated Students and UCSB Student Affairs, organized by Marjan Riazi, held a candlelight vigil and march. Thousands gathered in Storke Plaza and walked to the Anisq’Oyo Park amphitheater. Nearly every community leader was present but more importantly thousands of community members attended, with the outside news media covering every moment and being overbearing. These were the most beautiful and reassuring gatherings I’ve ever been to. Classes were cancelled on the following Tuesday for a service at Harder Stadium. It appeared the entire community attended as the stadium’s 20,000-plus seats were all filled – this was very much a shared experience by all who lived in Isla Vista and attended UCSB at the time.

The next weeks and months were full of intense community building. Isla Vista residents reacted by organizing against gun violence and toxic masculinity, and showing universal compassion to each other as we grieved. Graduation was a bittersweet weekend for the graduating class, as many celebrated leaving the community they’d called home for four years while grieving the loss of six classmates, including one of our own class. By emotionally supporting each other and in holding community meeting- after-meeting, we discussed the town’s past, present, and future with the goal of organizing for change with compassion.