The bar owners were right all along. Last Thursday night was a peaceful evening of fun and laughter as thousands of Halloween revelers enjoyed music, friends and drink specials. Last Saturday turned into riotous melee, as belligerent hoodlums enjoyed fisticuffs, tear gas and regular-priced rail mixers. We can now put the drink-specials argument to bed with the comforting conclusion that cheap booze solves Halloween behavioral problems.

Of course this conclusion is ridiculous, because it ignores countless other variables that distinguished Thursday night from Saturday. However, it is inevitable that similarly ridiculous simplifications of last weekend will distract and misguide our civic leaders and law enforcement officials as they assess mistakes made last week and prepare for Halloween parties of the future.

The riots of Nov. 3 were reportedly the largest since the Mifflin Street block party of 1996. I say “reportedly,” because at the time of the riots, I was sleeping peacefully next to the bar at Angelic Brewing Company, and afterwards I slept less peacefully at an after bar. Regardless, I have celebrated Halloween on State Street for four of the last five years, so I do have some context from which to pontificate. Besides, had I witnessed the event in its entirety, I would have no better memory of it than I do now.

To properly prepare for the future, you must begin with the assumption that riots are bad. Some of the university’s usual suspects may disagree with this assumption, but that is another column entirely. So, riots are bad and should be prevented, and if our community does not come up with workable solutions to prevent Halloween riots, we are doomed to end up bobbing for apples in somebody’s basement when our State Street revelry goes the way of the mythic Mifflin parties of yesteryear.

Perhaps such a scenario is unfounded, considering that the State Street party is a different beast than Mifflin ever was. Namely, the Mifflin Street party often requires residents to break the law by serving alcohol without a license and to persons who have yet to reach the age of drinking maturity. A police force can target these residents if it wishes, eliminate the alcohol, eliminate the fun and essentially shut the whole thing down.

This is not the case with State Street. There are a lot of underage consumers on Halloween, as there are on most nights, but police response would be a problem. Even if 100 officers spent the whole night issuing underage citations with probable cause to youngsters on State Street, the vast majority of offenders will go free and undeterred.

The alcohol supply can’t be squelched like on Mifflin since the bars are operating legally, and it would be hard to divert police resources away from State Street when a mass of thousands are gathering to track down a house party on the west side of campus.

There is no way to prevent the ingredients for a riot (large numbers, anonymous costumes, alcohol, drugs, out-of-towners) to gather on State Street, but perhaps we can minimize certain ingredients. For instance, a 4 a.m., 5 a.m. or even 6 a.m. bar-closing time on Halloween weekends would prevent patrons who still have a few drinks left in them from unnecessarily being forced into the streets with the lightweights.

Bars and their staff would have to need to pay extra attention to issues like over-serving, but most agree that the safest place you can drink is in a bar. Patrons would trickle into the streets as the morning progressed, rather than pour out in a synchronized manner as they did last Saturday. The crowds resulting from a later closing time would be more manageable and perhaps more interested in heading to bed than throwing bottles.

If this strategy proved successful, it could be extended year round to prevent the recurring violence that correlates with the simultaneous outpouring of drunks into a small geographical space every Saturday and Sunday morning.

In addition to the large crowds on the street, the police also point to their lack of staffing early on as a problem. Saturday’s riot was not a spontaneous combustion but rather an escalation of smaller violent incidences that eventually led to a mob mentality that put police in a dangerous position.

A larger police presence on the street could set the tone for the evening with zero-tolerance policies, arresting anyone seen violating the law. Nipping isolated acts of ignorance in the bud might keep things from exploding into mass stupidity.

Others will certainly float ideas to combat the riot problem. Just this week, our esteemed ASM chair Bryan Gadow suggested in the Wisconsin State Journal that another solution might be a university-sponsored Halloween party. Why not? After all, a class costume party prevented playground riots when I was in the second grade.

Even if you do not like my riot prevention proposals of later bar closings and increased law enforcement, I think we can all agree that we do not need ASM turning this into its next crusade.

A.J. Hughes ([email protected]) is a software developer and UW graduate.