You call that Halloween? You call that neutered, watered-down, city-sponsored, band-infested, well-policed, benign event Halloween? Celebrants from years ago would barely recognize what the city has wrought upon a fabled student tradition — the unbridled carnage and tomfoolery of Halloween on State Street. With bands, food vendors, gated entrances and exits and an eerily Orwellian public announcement system, the city of Madison is taking its turn at remaking the Madisonian Halloween tradition. The city has taken by force what used to belong to students. And Halloween in Madison is all the better for it. The student Halloween celebrations featured riot-inducing topless coeds, extemporaneous bonfires, riot police, tear gas, pepper spray and enough arrests to make an anti-war protester blush. The student Halloween was an overcrowded mess of out-of-towners who cared little for leaving State Street much the same way they had found it. The student Halloweens culminated in spectacularly frenzied riots as gleeful students found themselves on the receiving end of whatever you call those fire extinguisher looking things that deploy pepper spray. Oh yeah, and there were costumes, too. The city-sponsored Freakfest has provided us with a new and family friendly Madison Halloween mainstay. Piles of horse excrement dissuade revelers from gathering in the street, gates block off side streets and stages flank State Street. Police flood the streets and pose for pictures, while mounted police draw the sort of crowds that an apartment balcony full of the aforementioned riot-inducing topless coeds used to draw. Food vendors line the streets, and area families can rest assured that they will not need a SWAT team to escort their children the length of State Street. While students made Halloween a lawless mob fest, the city has managed to make Halloween into an event. This year, Freakfest ended as scheduled and was executed as planned. There was no tear gas or pepper spray, and not a hint of riot gear in sight. The night ended in a handful of arrests, and no major disturbances. Storefronts were not vandalized, unassuming tires were left unscathed and Lifehouse took us back to the nineties with light, inspirational rock. Students were willful, obedient participants in a well-orchestrated performance. And, if you were on State Street, you still had all sorts of fun. This year marks the second year in a row that State Street’s Halloween celebration did not end in pepper spray, tear gas, riot police or a combination thereof. A new pattern in Madison’s Halloween tradition is beginning to emerge, and it’s far from the lawless mob fest that Halloween has resembled in years gone by. The Halloween experience has been institutionalized. It has been tamed. We, the students, used to control when and how Halloween was celebrated. Now, we must purchase the right to enter State Street as if it were some commodity to be bought. We are forced to listen to bands we may or may not enjoy. We are the powerless participants in an event that we once defined. And it has worked so well. The biggest difference between the city Halloween and the student Halloween is the level of safety. The student Halloween was a frenzied mass of people, where the cop costumes far outnumbered the cop uniforms. Bands were not a highlight of the celebration — they were a distraction before the true revelry could begin. Students weren’t posing with police officers, they were heckling them, hurling objects at them, chanting those oft-maligned expletive-laced student section chants at them. Families, if they came, left in a hurry, worrying for their safety. Crowds wandered on, off, and around State Street aimlessly, waiting for the riot to begin. People were drunk, in costume, and expecting disorder. The city’s careful planning and execution have done away with the riotous expectations of Halloween revelers. Paying a sobering $5 cover charge has forced us to consider whether or not a trip to State Street is worth our while, and once there, causes us to consider the wisdom in destroying an event we had paid to attend. The city’s measures have served also to cut down on the amount of revelers whose sole purpose of going to State Street is to see whether or not there will be a riot, and just how bad it will be. The expectations surrounding Halloween have changed, and our erstwhile expectations of disorder created a context in which those who wished to bring it about were tacitly condoned, if never explicitly encouraged. We, the student body, have lost our rights to be the driving force behind Madison’s Halloween, and the city has proven to be an able steward of the celebration. And that’s exactly the way things should be. Gerald Cox ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in economics.