I'll just come right out and say it: I hate Halloween. I hate finding a costume and inevitably looking ridiculous; I hate paying for tickets to get into lame parties and even lamer bars, and now I hate reading article after article about people's proposed solutions to Halloween, each of which is more complicated than the last. How much can one city, one student body and several newspapers possibly focus on the same issue? Well, add another tally to the score, because here we go again.

My stance on the issue, however, is quite different from anything you have heard so far. It is one that recognizes those students who are too afraid of being called out as party poopers to express their true feelings surrounding Halloween. There is no feasible way that all 28,000 undergraduates can love the chaos that comes with being in Madison on Halloween weekend. I'll stop stalling and just come out with it: I hate Halloween so much that I think it should be abolished once and for all.

I mean no disrespect to those city officials and members of student committees who have dedicated a lot of time trying to make Halloween a safer and tamer party. Their methods, though, have proved outlandish and, in my opinion, unsuccessful. It seems as though their time could be better spent tackling other city issues each fall, rather than attending meeting after meeting to organize a night of debauchery that always seems to end in ripped costumes and handcuffs.

Let's first consider the newest addition to the bedlam that is Halloween: ticket sales (or lack thereof). As of Oct. 17, only 3,000 of the 80,000 available tickets had been sold. Nine hundred of those 3,000 were not even sold but distributed among residents and employees of State Street who need a way to get home or to work during the festivities. Laura Whitmore, who is responsible for public relations for the Madison Parks Department, claimed that the ticket sales are right on track with the projections. Honestly though, Whitmore is clearly doing a good job sugarcoating, and like any other PR woman, would never come out and admit that the ticket sales are depressing and likely cause for concern.

Although tickets will be available for sale up until the night of the party, as well as during the party itself, it is unlikely that any student will be able to follow the cryptic map (compliments of the City of Madison) and both locate a ticket vendor and stumble there in one piece, without hitting a roadblock of mounted police officers. Despite consistently claiming that they are trying to make Halloween as logical and hassle-free as possible, with each new day there seems to be a new restriction, a new plan or a new bit of information that students just must know about. Call me a pessimist, but no student will find it easy to keep track of exactly where they can and cannot enter State Street, not to mention which of those locations will be selling tickets.

The city has tried further to entice students to State Street — after they pay the $5 ticket charge, of course — by recruiting bands, most of which students have never heard of, to perform during the evening. The theory behind this is to distract the revelers from, well, reveling, and focus their attention on "sober" and controlled entertainment, not to mention give the no-name bands an audience for a night. What the city does not understand is that kids aren't coming to Madison from across the nation for a band they've never heard of or to add $5 more to their Halloween tab. They want to drink, party and watch the chaos ensue.

With that said, it is not my intention to blame the city for their Halloween plan, but rather alert them to the idea that perhaps no matter what fencing they use and what entertainment they provide, kids will be kids and this year will be just like the others. In fact, the promised police state on State Street is rumored to be provoking a complete relocation of the party to surrounding streets, such as Mifflin Street and Langdon Street, an occurrence that is sure to be bad news.

It's too late to do anything this year, so we will have to suck it up and deal with the ticket fee, or just hope that the party does in fact move to a street with no cover charge. Next year, though, please just throw in the towel and either let us do what we want or start researching ways to completely shut down Madison to outsiders … you like constructing police states anyway, right?

Emily Friedman ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in journalism and legal studies.