Opinion
A hallow compromise
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The City Council approved a revised version of Mayor Dave Cieslewicz's plan for Halloween on State Street Tuesday with only two dissenting votes.
Revisions to the plan include increasing the number of tickets to the event from 50,000 to 80,000, shifting the admissions time span back an hour and, perhaps most importantly, adding more entrance and exit points to the street — quadrupled from the initial proposal's three.
The additional tickets and points of entry should help alleviate some of the biggest concerns we had with the original plan. Setting a cap below the number of revelers usually seen on State Street on Halloween would have been extremely unwise, and expecting those thousands of people to swarm in through just three entrances would have been chaos.
But the plan still calls for $5 admission, still establishes gated entrances to State Street and is still going to encourage drunken revelers to party in surrounding neighborhoods rather than enter a practically city-sponsored, gated attraction.
The basic inconvenience imposed by crowded entrance points, however insignificant $5 really is for most students, is still something costumed attendees will try to avoid. If partygoers find the kind of gathering they're looking for by chance along the way, the charge and the hassle associated with the State Street party might just discourage them from attending the main event at all.
The police are aware of the issue and plan to have officers mobilized around Langdon Street and Mifflin Street, but spreading out the event they are trying to control certainly isn't the best course of action. Especially considering the people who cause the most trouble — the infamous few 3 a.m. fire-starters, so to speak — could be the most disinterested in entering a closely policed, city-sponsored event in the first place.
Though the plan has taken huge steps forward, some of its most basic premises are fundamentally flawed. Police need to keep a close eye on surrounding areas and be ready for a party that could potentially be very spread out, and students need to make it work this year.
Though the plan is no longer up for debate, the future of Halloween definitely is.
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Agreed. Wow, it’s interesting to see the Badger Herald in full agreement with Brenda Konkel and Austin King, but refreshing nonetheless. I wish other members of the Council would have had the sense of those two.