For the fourth year in a row, the Halloween festivities on State Street in Madison ended with confrontation, the police clearing the street with pepper spray. This is also one of the biggest local stories of the year, with what is certain to be a lengthly and contentious debate about the causes of and solutions to the city’s continuing Halloween problems yet to come.
Police Chief Breaks Down Halloween Numbers
The tally is in….468 people got in trouble with the law over Halloween weekend….and police chief Noble Wray says they’re recommending a total of 700 different charges.
Workers at the Campus Inn …a hotel that sits only a block from State street … were no more busy last week, than they were any other weekend out of the year.
Hotel manager Bill Wellman say higher room rates … and the fact that they were already booked with business travelers and other vacationers, meant the Campus didn’t host very many Halloween partiers.
In the end, Halloween on State Street may have cost taxpayers upwards of $700,000 dollars. Halloween on state street has ended the same way for four years. Madison Police Chief Noble Wray defended his department’s year long planning process from critics who argue it wasn’t enough.
MADISON, Wis. — Some downtown business owners aren’t crazy about the mayor’s idea of shutting down State Street during Halloween next year.
The owners of Larry B’s, which has been open since February, said they did three times the normal business because of the added Halloween traffic.
MADISON, Wis. – A 19-year-old man remained hospitalized in critical condition Monday after falling down stairs at an apartment building during Madison’s annual Halloween Party over the weekend, authorities said
MADISON, Wis. — A weekend death has been linked to the Halloween festivities, and another man is in critical condition.
Although Madison police won’t tie the death to the State Street revelry yet, a source close to the investigation says it is.
News 3 learned a 22-year-old man was in town for the Halloween party.
MADISON, Wis. — Madison’s mayor is indicating he would be willing to impose a local version of martial law next Halloween ââ?¬â?? and shut down the party for good.
The mayor is questioning whether this is really an event the citizens of Madison want to sponsor.
Police Chief Noble Wray said he believes the party needs to be changed substantially or be put down.
For the fourth year in a row, the State Street Halloween celebrations end with MPD enforcement action that includes chemical weapons.
Tens of thousands lined State Street for this year�s Halloween event Saturday night. While this weekend�s party was an overall improvement from past years because there was not a riot, a few thousand partygoers lost their common sense and impeded the evening�s potential to reach expectations of city officials.
Madison police declared a gathering on State Street an unlawful assembly early Sunday morning and cleared the crowd with officers in riot gear and pepper spray for the fourth consecutive year.
There is bittersweet sentiment from both Madison city officials and UW-Madison students following a Saturday night filled with a boisterous crowd of more than 100,000 on State Street, chants of, ââ?¬Å?Fuck the policeââ?¬Â and the deployment of pepper spray to clear the largest gathering the State Street Halloween celebration has ever seen.
As state support for higher education diminishes in Wisconsin, public universities are turning to students to make up the difference. And not just through tuition.
As police officers used force and pepper spray to restrain crowds of unruly partygoers, some University of Wisconsin students have called the police�s behavior into question.
As the State Street crowd turned suddenly riotous early Sunday morning, police resorted to the use of pepper spray to quell the horde of Halloween revelers for the fourth year in a row.
As UW-Madison’s 3,000 teaching assistants enter their 28th month of working without a contract, some TAs are showing signs of frustration with their union leaders.
The Teaching Assistants Association and the state have been locked in a contract dispute over wages and benefits. The chief sticking point is health care – the state wants the assistants to start paying a modest monthly premium for their coverage, and the assistants, worried about the prospect of spiraling costs in the future, have refused.
Police in Madison, Wis., declared the crowds of Halloween partiers along a pedestrian mall an unlawful gathering early Sunday and used pepper spray to break up the revelers about 2 a.m.
There was far less pepper spray this year than last year. That from Madison’s Downtown Alderman Mike Verveer…commenting on this year’s Halloween Celebration on State Street.
The clean up from Halloween ’05 was swift.
By the time many bar managers left early Sunday morning, no remnants remained from Saturday night’s revelry.
The word of the night is density, as in managing crowd density here in the 500 block of State Street. Police have set up these pedestrian roadblocks to prevent people from gaining access to the area where the trouble usually starts.
For the fourth year in a row, the annual Halloween celebration on State St. ended with police unleashing pepper spray on the crowd. But in a departure from previous years, police didn’t wait for revelers to turn violent before taking action.
MADISON, Wis. — Among the non-locals there were dozens of UW students ticketed for different violations.
Now the UW must interview troublemakers to decide whether or not to discipline them.
They filled State Street to see a parade of costumes. “It’s like Mardi Gras it’s a good time, people here have fun,” said Josh Thompson of Manitowoc, dressed in blue dress and white apro
In the wake of a record attendance at Madison’s annual halloween party, Mayor Dave Cieslewicz sang a familiar tune — “If it were in my power to cancel it – I certainly would.” Cieslewicz repeated what he’s said in previous years: that he’d prefer the end of Halloween on State St.
The Madison Police Department says, after a year of planning, they met two of their four goals to bring a safe end to the Halloween event on State Street. In a release sent five hours after the event ended in a cloud of pepper spray, the department and the city now believes there should be serious discussion as to the future of Halloween in Madison.
Many State Street bars will maintain close-to-normal bar times this Halloween with last call at 2 a.m. and doors closing at 2:30 a.m., despite city pressure to close early. Some will also open their back-door exits to help ease bar-time congestion.
Halloween is defined by children in the United States as the one day each year that they can dress up as something other than themselves, go door-to-door and receive candy for free, and then proceed to hoard and consume the candy that they have earned. If that same definition were applied to Madison, one would assume that every day is Halloween.
To reduce the number of visitors to Madison for Halloween, Interim Dean of Students Lori Berquam has made significant strides in contacting neighboring university officials about expectations regarding the celebration.
Whenever a student-athlete at the University of Wisconsin finds the kind of trouble that makes headlines, questions are invariably raised about their perceived lack of awareness.
Doesn’t he know better than to get into a bar fight, especially when he’s underage and everyone knows who he is?
Northwestern students celebrating Halloween at the University of Wisconsin will not be allowed to stay in university housing, Wisconsin administrators announced last week in a letter to Big Ten schools. Wisconsin administrators will also contact the universities of visiting students who are arrested at the Halloween hotspot.
Even though college studentsââ?¬â?¢ trick-or-treating days are long gone, the urge to dress up in ridiculous costumes is too great to just spend Halloween at home. This year, instead of bemoaning their ââ?¬Å?uninvitationââ?¬Â to Badgerland, University students should not hesitate to let loose. They donââ?¬â?¢t need to go far.
Whenever a student-athlete at the University of Wisconsin finds the kind of trouble that makes headlines, questions are invariably raised about their perceived lack of awareness.
NEW HAVEN, Connecticut (AP) — Yale is banning drinking games from this year’s football game against Harvard and will shut down all tailgate parties after halftime — a move some alumni say could put a damper on one of college football’s oldest and most storied rivalries.
“A police officer came up, grabbed me and said that I’d thrown rocks at police officers.”
That was the beginning of a long night for then UW sophomore Afsheen Foroozan.
Foroozan says the officer who took him in was wrong … he was actually throwing tennis balls, that were part of his costume.
Dale Morris will be among the madness on Madison’s State Street Saturday night where he says he’ll drink some beer.
“Within reason, you know, cuz it gets pretty crazy around here you gotta keep on your toes,” he explains.
Halloween is just 2 nights away and businesses are bracing for another round of partying on Saturday night, a night that has typically erupted into riots, looting, and windows being smashed in years past.
(MADISON) The University of Wisconsin Board of Regents recently voted to allow a group of students to handle more than 30 million dollars of investments on behalf of the University. Itââ?¬â?¢s a hands-on experiment that they hope will be a good — and profitable — learning experience.
Most know of it as ââ?¬Å?The Red Gym.ââ?¬Â Others simply refer to it as ââ?¬Å?the castle on Langdon Street.ââ?¬Â There is even a group on facebook.com that is convinced the Red Gym is the home of Bowser, the famous archenemy of Nintendoââ?¬â?¢s classic videogame hero, Mario.
On the daily trudge up Bascom Hill, although students may not realize it, they are passing a National Historic Landmark. Tucked between Bascom Hall and the Education building sits the first building erected on the University of Wisconsin campus: North Hall.
Walking down Langdon Street toward Memorial Union, you cannot miss it. It is waiting for you at the end of the block, testing your audacity. The recently turned orange ivy creeps up the sides of its brown stone base. Overgrown bushes frame the uncomfortable shade of crimson red brick. Once you have finally digested the structure, your eyes dart to rusty green letters reading Science Hall directly centered over the entrance. ââ?¬Å?Proceed,ââ?¬Â it dares.
Madison starts its weekend-long Halloween revelry this Friday, with area officials urging participants to celebrate responsibly or face ââ?¬Å?strong actionââ?¬Â in the future. While this warning may seem standard, it is far from hollow. A similar celebration in Boulder, Colo., where reckless behavior drove the city to discontinue its Pearl Street Mall Crawl, could foreshadow the future of Halloween in Madison.
Police Chief Noble Wray and Mayor Dave Cieslewicz outlined Wednesday the City of Madison�s plan to keep Halloween safe and secure this weekend.
Madison�s Halloween celebrations have been marked by rioting and extreme disorderly conduct for the past three years. City officials said they intend to stop the trend. Security planning for this year�s event started immediately after last year�s Halloween.
The stereotype of college students as apathetic, uninvolved individuals is simply not accurate, Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., declared Wednesday at an event held by College Democrats of Madison in the Wisconsin Union Theater.
On a cold October evening in Madison some three years ago, a few ordinary people decided that a holiday normally reserved for elementary school children with candy pails should include excessive inebriation, pyromania and looting. These troublemakers were not a representative sample of the city�s population or even the University of Wisconsin student body; they were a group of bad apples with no caramel coating.
In the past decade, 1,500 college seniors with good academic standing dropped out of the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh.
Madison city leaders urged University of Wisconsin students to be leaders in their efforts to make the State Street Halloween celebration safe and fun at a press conference Wednesday.
Former vice presidential hopeful and current U.S. Sen. John Edwards, D-North Carolina, called University of Wisconsin students to action in the fight against poverty at Union Theater Wednesday afternoon.
Josh Rupert is going to be Elmo for Halloween. And Elmo does not riot….He’ll hit the town on Friday night, but on Saturday, Rupert says he plans to “stay far away from State Street.”
“It’s not my type of environment. It’s just too packed,” said Rupert, a fifth-year senior at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Last year, I got caught in the middle of what happened. I felt out of place. I got tear-gassed.”
Meanwhile, Ben Karp, a sophomore from Mankato, Minn., said he is looking forward to staying downtown “till the riots.”
….”It’s just fun. It’s a good time. Fires in the street. Tear gas and everything,” Karp said, adding he intended to watch, not participate.
UW-Madison officials are hoping more students fall into Elmo’s camp.
Poverty is the great moral issue facing America today, former U.S. senator and 2004 vice presidential candidate John Edwards told a crowd of UW-Madison students.
The country is hungry for a big issue – a cause, a calling – it can get involved in, Edwards told about 500 people Wednesday afternoon at the Wisconsin Union Theater.
….”Americans are looking for something moral and just. Something other than this mess in Iraq we are engaged in,” he said to overwhelming applause.
“They need a champion. That champion is you,” Edwards said, noting that college students have spurred major change in the past, from civil rights to the Vietnam anti-war movement to helping topple the apartheid system in South Africa.
Madison police officials think they may have the solution for the Halloween chaos that has plagued the city for the past three years: keep the crowd moving, right up to the end.
Police Chief Noble Wray said Wednesday that police plan to aggressively keep crowds from stagnating in the 500 and 600 blocks of State Street, where problems have resulted in a riotous end to the annual Halloween bash for the last three years, last year culminating in a small bonfire and a pepper spray assault.
MADISON, Wis. – They’re banning guests in the dormitories, restricting access to downtown, and staffing the most police officers for an event in Madison’s history.
Slamming the door in the face of eager trick-or-treaters, officials in Madison, Wis., have a message for would-be-revelers from Minnesota headed to this weekend’s giant Halloween bash: STAY AWAY!
In a chilly message sent to colleges and universities in surrounding states, the University of Wisconsin-Madison warns that “out-of-town guests are not welcome” this weekend and that they will be barred from the school’s residence halls.
UW-Madison has already said guests won’t be allowed in residences halls this weekend, and privately owned complexes are taking the University’s lead.
One company told 27 News, that it is actually requiring it’s residents wear wrist bands this weekend. Students in the privately owned residence halls are required to put those wrist bands on by noon Thursday.
This intersection, along with plenty others in this area, will be blocked to traffic, starting at about seven on Saturday night.
And if State Street gets too crowded … police will use those barricades to keep pedestrians out, too.
By mid-October, the leaves on campus are turning, homecoming games are being celebrated, and ââ?¬â? at any number of colleges ââ?¬â? bigotry in one form or another hurts some students deeply.
The recent spike in fuel costs has homeowners scrambling this winter to cover the expected rise in heating bills; but as to exactly how these high fuel costs will affect the UW-Madison campus, not much, if anything, is known.
The recent spike in fuel costs has homeowners scrambling this winter to cover the expected rise in heating bills; but as to exactly how these high fuel costs will affect the UW-Madison campus, not much, if anything, is known.
Halloween 2002 inaugurated a pattern of destruction on State Street that university and city officials are desperate to end. But for many new students at UW-Madison, the background to the preparations for this weekend may be unclear.
When Provost Peter Spear packed his bags and bid adieu to the University of Wisconsin earlier this week, this campus lost an accomplished administrator who helped guide the university to where it is today.
In Celtic Ireland, Halloween traditions began in the year 5 B.C.E. On State Street in Madison, the University of Wisconsin students� tradition began in the late 1970s.
