Despite their arrest at the 2012 Mifflin Street Block Party and the Madison Police Department’s promise of a stricter, zero tolerance policy, some of the 103 students arrested last year plan to celebrate all the same, if not with little more discretion.
One plan even includes celebrating Mifflin outside of Madison.
UW-Madison senior “Andrea”, who did not wish to use her real name, was at a house party that had overflowed onto the street. On the sidewalk with friends, she was handed an open beer.
The police soon surrounded her.
“The whole thing felt like a show,” she said. “[The police] paraded us down the street in handcuffs and sat us in a holding area in the front lawn of one of the houses [on Mifflin]. ”
After being searched there, she was transferred to a makeshift processing facility in a parking garage under a municipal building around Capitol Square filled with other offenders—as many as 250, by her estimates.
Andrea remembers being zip-tied to a folding chair and held for three hours.
“By the end it was a joke,” she said. “People were shouting to their friends and making plans for when they were released.”
Picking up where she left off, she met up with some friends at a party on Langdon Street to make up for lost time.
She had a lot less of it to make up than UW-Madison junior “Ron,” who claims to be the first person arrested at the block party last year.
He was on his way to a friend’s party early in the day, walking down Mifflin with a clear plastic bag filled beer, when he was stopped by police on patrol, who asked for his identification and if they could search his belongings.
He consented and his unopened beer was discovered.
Like Andrea, Ron also met up with friends after being released. For someone who drinks most weekends during the school year, he found the ordeal disorienting.
“I don’t think [the] no tolerance policy is fitting with the rest of the school year,” he said. “It felt so arbitrary, and it was really frustrating.”
Both students said they have learned from the experience. Andrea, who felt “bullied” by the police, became interested in learning more about her rights and what the police can lawfully ask of her in such instances.
“When you have two police officers in front of you telling you that you’re in violation of a zero-tolerance policy, it’s important to know your rights,” she said. “It’s pretty intimidating, and it’s hard to know what to do in that situation.”
?Ron, who regrets not knowing more about the city ordinances during Mifflin, is taking himself out of the equation entirely: as a member of the Greek community, he is contemplating leaving Madison with an assorted group of fraternities and sororities considering taking the party to a campsite beyond city limits— and out of the reach of MPD and this year’s more stringent policing policies.
