Isla Vista, UCSB Prepare for “Day of Mourning and Reflection”

The day of rememberance was declared as the campus community grapples with the emotional trauma that remains in the week of Friday's violent rampage that left seven dead.

Isla Vista is not ready to try to resume life as normal.

The Memorial Day holiday saw UC Santa Barbara students out as usual on bikes, on skateboards, on foot in the community adjacent to campus.

But no one traveled very far without passing by another memorial for the victims Friday night of what the violent rampage that left seven dead, including Elliot Rodger, the community college student identified by authorities as the perpetrator.

On so many faces, the pain cannot be hidden.

"It's difficult, but it's really beautiful to see people coming together like this," said Lauren Koch, a graduate student in pschology.

She spoke as she stood at the sidewalk memorial that has grown on Pardall Road.  Two blocks west of the campus entrance is the IV Deli, where student Christopher Martinez was shot to death.

"I want something to change and I want my son's death to mean something," his father, Richard Martinez, said Monday in an interview with NBC News.

Martinez on Saturday decried the access to guns in our society.  Since then, additional issues have come to the fore, including revelations about Rodger's mental health and angry screeds and threats he had posted on YouTube, and also in an email he sent out shortly before the killing
began in Roger's apartment.

"When these things happen, there's a general feeling in the country that these things are hopeless," Martinez said. "You know what? I don't care if it's hopeless. I don't accept that, regardless of whether it is subjectively hopeless, I'm not going to approach it that way."

At UC Santa Barbara, the resumption of classes the day after the Memorial Day holiday has been postponed until Wednesday. 

Chancellor Henry Yang declared Tuesday "A Day of Mourning and Reflection," with students and faculty urged to come to campus and gather in Harder Stadium for a memorial at 4 p.m.

Martinez is among those who will speak.

"My intention is," Martinez began haltingly and with tears welling in his eyes, "to tell those young people who are alive...that  they should try to do the things that my son won't ever have a chance to do."

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