This year’s Freakfest party will be my eighth year celebrating Halloween in downtown Madison. That’s right, my first late night State Street experience was the crazed riot of 2005.

At the tender age of 15, drunken college students throwing large objects over my head through plate glass windows was probably one of the most horrifying events I could imagine, and my young nerves were not calmed as I bolted coughing through the streets desperately trying to stay clear of the tear gas. However, at 22, the watered down pseudo-party seems almost as bad.

On first glance, the city of Madison’s attempts to tone down the party seem like reasonable and realistic ways to make the event fun while still being safe and – equally important – not too astronomically expensive. However, these policies put into practice make for an event that most students don’t think of as a good time.

Let’s break it down:

The Freakfest bands over the past few years have sucked.

I know music taste is subjective, and of course there are people who are super psyched that All Time Low is headlining. But few of my friends had ever even heard of them, and those who had were not in favor. The non-headliners are not much better, and the almost total lack of hip-hop, arguably the most popular genre of music among our generation, shows just how out of touch the planners of this event are.

If the city plans on using live music to keep students out of trouble on Halloween weekend, it needs to get serious about finding bands that appeal to more of us.

The gating system is seriously flawed.

There are two problems to the gate system employed on Halloween. First, students and other citizens who want to enter the street for a reason besides the party are put through a huge hassle. Let’s say your best friend lives on State Street and you just want to have a small party at his or her house. Either pay $8 to $12, or forget it.

While that is a minor complaint, think about this: Imagine living on State Street and coming home at midnight after work. While the city may provide you with a free ticket so that you can enter your home (I know, it’s really sweet of them), you still have to wait in line and go through security for the opportunity to sleep in your own bed.

While those hypotheticals are annoying, minor inconveniences aren’t the biggest problem with the gates. This is: Students walk home late at night, especially on big party nights like Halloween. As much as we are warned against it, we women sometimes walk alone, especially when we’ve had enough to drink that we’re feeling bold – which also means we’re in more danger than if we were sober. The least the city could do to help us stay safe is to allow us to cut across State Street, but every year at least one of my lone female friends is made to walk all the way around the Capital. At night. By herself. This is not really my definition of keeping citizens safe, Madison Police.

Charging admission is a problem.

That statement is a little oversimplified. The act of making students pay to go to a party is not the problem. Frankly, we do that almost every weekend. The act of making students pay to go to this party is my issue. Madison does actually need to charge us for cleaning and police supervision, both of which are necessary costs. It should, however, offer us more in return than crappy bands and the chance to pet a real live police horse.

It just doesn’t feel like Halloween.

Halloween is traditionally a night of little supervision and lots of debauchery. A night when anything can happen. The city had to step in after 2005, but this squeaky clean corporatized party is as unappealing as the riots.

It’s too late for major changes this year – the bands have been selected, the ticket prices set and the street map approved. Perhaps next year the city will look into some of these issues and make Freakfest a party students actually want to attend. If however, they continue to take what could be one of the best nights of the year and turn it into a bigger disappointment year by year, I think I’ll riot.

Carolyn Briggs ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in English.