The City of Athens and Ohio University are taking precautions to ensure a safe weekend of Halloween festivities.
Beginning Friday, campus parking lots will be closed to all cars that do not have OU parking permits, according to the OU Web site.
Starting Friday night and continuing Saturday night, about 80 OU staff members will be located near residence halls, said Dale Tampke, OU's associate vice president for finance and administration. Only one set of doors to each building will be available for entrance, and these employees will check the other doors, as well as doors to other campus buildings, to make sure they are locked.
We don't want people who don't belong in residence halls to be going in and out of there
Tampke said. We also do a lot of direction giving and helping people who have had too much to drink take it easy.
About 65 faculty volunteers also will help monitor behavior in Athens this weekend, he said. These faculty members will wander on main green areas; some remote campus areas, such as The Ridges; and some off-campus student-housing areas, such as Congress and Mill streets.
After last year's experience we felt we should expand our range a bit Tampke said. We want people to be safe and have no property damage. That's the goal.
Uptown, the layout will be similar to previous years, with Court Street blocked between President and Carpenter streets, and Union, Washington and West State streets blocked between College to Congress streets, according to a map from Steve Pierson, code enforcement director.
The roadblocks will be positioned beginning at 7:30 a.m. Saturday and will all be in place by 6 p.m., according to the map. The two stages for the bands, which will begin performing Saturday evening, will be located at the intersections of Union and Court streets and West State and Court streets.
The OU Police Department Lt. Richard Russell said the department will have 22 officers patrolling from 8 p.m. Saturday to 4 a.m. Sunday.
The department also is deputizing officers from the Lancaster Police Department to assist with crowd control, Tampke said.
Athens Police Department Capt. Tom Pyle said all 31 of the department's officers as well as 30 volunteer officers from other southeastern Ohio departments.
Your goal is not to arrest people -it is to disperse crowds
Pyle said.
-Sean Edgar contributed to this article.
17
Archives
Natalie Morales
