The Wake

Usually, when Halloween weekend rolls around, the U of M campus becomes a ghost town. Students flock in the thousands to our eastern neighbor for the second biggest party in the country (besides Mardi Gras, of course). Madison has always complained of the costs out-of-towners cause the city in damages and clean-up, so this year they charged admission to the famed State Street in Madison, and to that students said: Forget it.

According to a news release from the city, last year’s Halloween in Madison cost the city $600,000, mostly spent in public safety and clean-up.

In order to cover the costs of the party, Madison charged a $5 admission to State Street (the location of the all-night party flocked with drunk students and hundreds of cops) and only allowed 50,000 partygoers to be on the street. This means that almost half of the almost 80,000 who were there in 2005 would not be allowed into the party. But 32,000 tickets were sold and the city only made about $150,000, which is expected to cover one-third of estimated costs for the event.

The goal of these limits was not only to cover costs, but also to keep outsiders out. Madison has not been quiet about its resentment of the fact that people from as far as Florida come to the college capital city to mess it up for a weekend and then leave. “This is a community event. It’s time we take it back,” Susan Schmitz, president of Downtown Madison Inc., told the Wisconsin State Journal.

For years, UW students have not been allowed to have visitors over the weekend in student housing, and this year was no different. “Keep in mind that nonresidents will not be allowed in University Housing residence halls Oct. 27-28,” Lori Berquam, interim dean of students at Madison, said in a statement released to campus students.

There were strong hopes to “rebrand” the event into a community festival, rather than seeing how many drunken students the police can arrest.

Most of the security measures were taken on the night of Saturday, October 28. Many worried that this meant the students would come out in full force on Friday, October 27, but this wasn’t the case and Friday only saw 10,000 visitors.

According to Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz, the city had three goals with this year’s celebration: to not have to use pepper spray on partiers to end the festivities, to reduce the amount of over-consumption of alcohol, and to recover part of the costs. Cieslewicz says all of these goals were met.

There were a total of 117 arrests over the course of the weekend, which is less than half the approximately 447 arrests made in 2005 and these charges were mostly related to alcohol consumption, not violence.

Police were also not forced to wear riot gear as they have in the past few years, which was another goal of the city.

Because of this “re-branding,” many U of M students, who Madison says cause the most damage of anyone on State Street, chose to stay home and save the gas and admission money.

Instead of heading east, many U of M students opted to cruise University Avenue in their Halloween best. Also, “Freak Fest,” a Dinkytown pub crawl, kept students occupied over the weekend and was quite a success, showing that Dinkytown could pull off its own Halloween celebration.

Madison’s Halloween Action Committee is trying for free admission for UW students in 2007, but with this the city may make no money, as this could be the beginning of the end of Minnesotans heading to Wisconsin for a good time.