Although it may be too early to get into the holiday spirit of Thanksgiving, the hundreds of students who peacefully took the Strip this Halloween season in Carbondale deserve a hearty thank you for remaining in control.

So do City Councilmembers John Budslick, Larry Briggs and SIUC champions Dave Vingren, Pat Kelly and Mark Terry. These are the people who believed in students during a year in which others in Carbondale readily thought otherwise.

No one would have been able to give thanks for any revelers on the Strip a little more than a year ago. In fact, Carbondale was singing the holiday blues:27 people were arrested, three police officers were injured, businesses and private property sustained more than $10,000 in damage, and two railroad crossing gates were destroyed by rioters last year during the weekend before Halloween.

Advertisement

In addition to making national headlines, the embarrassing 1996 riot nearly killed any chance for civic leaders, community residents and students to work together as adults.

Instead as hindsight allows us to see one year later the riots gave the entire Carbondale community the platform it needed to turn things around. And the last two weekends in Carbondale attest things have changed for the better.

That is because SIUC students finally realized that taking the Strip with violence and mob action only hurts everyone including themselves in the process. Student leaders Vingren, Kelly and Terry promised that students had learned this important lesson. City Councilmen Budslick and Briggs operated election campaigns around that same theme.

Earlier this summer, both groups worked together to lower the bar-entry-age from 21 to 19. Then they organized the successful First Cellular’s Main Street Pig Out, which turned out to be a litmus test for Halloween. Students behaved responsibly at both events.

The weekend before this year’s Halloween, there were 32 citations issued to partiers on the Strip for considerably minor offenses when compared to last year’s melee. The actual Halloween weekend brought no trouble. Thank you for giving us nothing to report about.

And Budslick, Briggs, Vingren, Kelly and Terry acted as unofficial chaperones during this year’s pre-Halloween festivities quelling the few and far between signs of trouble among partiers on the Strip. They also eased any remaining doubts about the immediate future of city-student relations in Carbondale.

And after this year’s quiet Halloween season, the future looks very bright indeed.

Advertisement*