“Be careful,” my fiancée told me as I walked out the door of my downtown apartment, heading to report on the Mifflin Street Block Party. I dismissed the advice and descended on the madness, determined to check out a party that my neighbor, a UW-Madison senior, would be attending. Drunken revelry was in the air well before I reached the iconic 400 block of Mifflin. Students were drinking and blasting music in backyards and porches all along Gorham Street, free of the relentless police surveillance that partygoers on Mifflin had been warned of ad nauseam by city and university officials.
Office of Strategic Communication