Floatopia 2 a flop? Efforts to derail fun but ‘destructive’ student beach party

Think back to your college days and you might appreciate the lure of this: flocks of friends and smiling strangers, endless beer, dancing on the sands, floating in offshore rafts, no organizers. Good times in the prime of your life on a gorgeous Santa Barbara beach. It doesn’t get better, right?

Or maybe it couldn’t get worse, depending on whom you ask. Unsponsored, word-of-mouth-party “Floatopia 2″ is expected to draw 12,000 attendees to Isla Vista on May 9, but school, city and county officials, as well as many students, are now rallying against it.

A Floatopia party in 2008 brought around 4,000 people to the beach, according to the Santa Barbara Independent. That number ballooned to an estimated 12,000 at the “half-mile-long beach party”  on April 4, 2009 due, at least in part, to a promotion via Facebook, reported UCSB student publication Daily Nexus.

The April party was a huge hit with many participants, but not so amused were officials, students and others concerned about the impact of remnants including Styrofoam rafts breaking apart in the water and the effect of large amounts of urine on the ocean environment during an event without portable toilets or other facilities.

Still, will the party go on? A search on Facebook now shows more groups against the event than for it, and wall posts on pro-Floatopia group pages range from enthusiastic yelps of attendance to questions regarding whether the event is still happening.

“The cost seems to be too high to pay.”

Rod Tucknott, the director of UCSB Adventure Programs, is no curmudgeon. He’s in favor of the concept behind having a good time, drinking responsibly and enjoying UCSB’s amazing environment. “I get that part,” he said. He was a UCSB student himself once upon a time, after all.

But Tucknott is no fan of this particular party. Having started the “Floatopia 2 - NO!” group on Facebook, which presently has over 2,200 members, he considers the cost of Floatopia “to be too high” on multiple levels.

For two, there are the risks to individual partygoers and the costs to Santa Barbara County, especially in a time of economic strain. During the April party, there were 13 bookings and 70 citations by law enforcers and 13 “medical emergencies, including two people who fell off the bluffs,” according to the Daily Nexus. Search-and-rescue teams were on the lookout for drownings, and water-rescue teams were present to assist drunken partiers in the water.

At the last event, partying took place on the beach and off the shore in home-built and manufactured rafts “of varying quality,” said Tucknott, who speculates that the large amounts of alcohol consumed by many partygoers contributed to the number of swimmer assists that had to be conducted.

But Tucknott’s greatest concern is the environmental impact resulting from thousands of people crowding a narrow beach without proper trash and toilet facilities. On his Facebook group page, Tucknott has posted photos (including the one above) taken 20 days after the event at the party site. Concerns include Styrofoam and other trash adversely affecting marine life, makeshift rafts with chemical-laden insulation foam breaking up in the surf zone and the potential impact of human discharge, he said.

On April 22, 2009, UCSB’s Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Michael D. Young sent an e-mail to students (posted on the Floatopia 2 - No! page) admonishing the potential destructiveness of a Floatopia 2 and urging students to stand up against it.

“Yes, everyone loves a big beach party, but this is a party where you invite tens of thousands of your ‘best’ friends to urinate in our ocean, destroy vegetation on the cliffs, drop broken glass and plastics of all shapes, sizes and varieties onto the sand and into the water, allow garbage to be strewn along the shoreline down to Santa Barbara and beyond, destroy habitat for any number of species and kill untold numbers of fish and birds,” he said in the letter.

“There is no way to spin this as anything other than a frivolous, self-indulgent, destructive, and irresponsible event,” Young said.

Will the party go on?

“I think the administration has been overreacting,” said student Andrew Ballinger in a Daily Nexus article. “Besides, students here love to party, I don’t think an environmental concern is going to stop them.” Another student interviewed in the piece agreed “that Floatopia 2 is likely to still occur.”

But Tucknott and others seem determined. “It doesn’t have to be inevitable [that Floatopia 2 will take place],” he said. “The big push right now is education. The hope is that students will become more informed as to why this isn’t an appropriate way to play or enjoy an afternoon because it comes at too high a cost. The hope is that students will choose not to do this.”

- Susan Derby, Special to the Los Angeles Times

[Video: YouTube]

[Photos: Floatopia event site 20 days later, on April 24, 2009, by Rod Tucknott]

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 29, 2009 at 2:22 pm by Susan Derby and is filed under California, Eco-Travel, Islands & Beaches, Los Angeles, News, Tips & Advice, Santa Barbara. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.