After several meetings, including two public hearings on the issue, the task force determined that a combination of past ideas would offer the best hope of ending the party. The group recommended that the city council raise the bar-entry ago to 21 a move that has been proposed several times in the past, with watered-down results and that SIUC close for the weekend so students would be gone for the weekend.

The biggest problem with raising the bar-entry age is that it leaves younger students with little weekend entertainment. While there are a few coffeehouses and movie theaters in town, bars are the heart of Carbondale’s night life. Closing bars to underage patrons would cut younger students off from the Carbondale music scene, since few popular bands play at coffeehouses or other non-alcoholic facilities. Additionally, couples of varying ages may have trouble finding things to do together if one partner is underage and the other is over 21.

Raising the bar-entry age is a good idea, since it would reduce the problem of underage drinking on the Strip not just at Halloween, but all year long something Carbondale has needed for a long time. However, the council needs to guarantee people under 21 that they will have something to do while their older friends are at the bars. Without alter-native entertainment, this potentially beneficial solution will only result in resentment and an increase in the number of fake I.D.s in Carbondale.

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Despite opponents’ claims that it is an ineffective solution, the task force’s second recommenda-tion closing the campus for a Halloween break has been used before with significant success. According to a report compiled by City Manager Jeff Doherty, attendance and arrests at the annual street party reached all-time lows during the three years when the campus was closed. In 1990, the first year of the closed-campus policy, attendance dropped from 3,500 to only 1,000 a decrease of 71 percent. The next year saw a similar crowd size, and by 1992, the number shrank to only a few hundred. When the administra-tion decided to reopen the campus in 1993, the crowd size grew, and the number of arrests surged from 28 in 1992 to 148 in 1993.

Obviously, the fall break has its problems. As opponents have pointed out, it disrupts the semester and creates unnecessary expenses for dorm-dwellers, who have to bear the cost of going home or getting a motel room for the weekend. However, that is a small price to pay if as the numbers indicate the break can tame Carbondale’s Hallo-ween monster. If the University makes its decision now and gives faculty and students plenty of advance notice, they will be able to plan for the break, and the problems it creates will be minimal.

Past efforts to control the bacchanalian celebration have been ineffective because what began as strict, well-defined policies were amended and compromised beyond recognition. There is an old proverb that says spare the rod and spoil the child. Halloween has become like an unruly child whose parents have spent too much time saying, Now, Johnny, don’t do that any more and too little time showing Johnny what will happen if he disobeys. If they intend to bring Halloween under control, it’s time for Carbon-dale and SIUC to get out the paddle and make their brat mind, because sparing the rod simply isn’t working.