For the first time in 22 years, Mineral Street was shut down for a block party to help celebrate the University of Wisconsin-Platteville’s annual Mudfest.  The idea of starting a new school tradition first came to senior business administration major Colin Griffin.

“I understand [that] Mudfest has always been about the rugby team, and I don’t want to take away from their tradition.  My goal is to ‘Mineral’ as the new tradition.  Just like [how] Madison has ‘Mifflin’ and La Crosse has ‘Oktoberfest’, I want Platteville to get on the map with ‘Mineral’,” Griffin said.

Mudfest is an annual rugby tournament hosted by the men and women’s rugby teams for the last 22 years.  The event naturally draws a large crowd, but due to the excitement of the first block party surrounding it, the attendance was higher than normal.

“I played rugby when I was in high school, so I was looking forward to going to Mudfest this year to watch the tournament. It really is a great sport,” sophomore criminal justice major Jesse Kerstner said. “I wasn’t planning on going to any parties, but I heard about the block party from a co-worker and then again from another friend and I knew that I had to go to it.”

In order to get Mineral Street closed down and have a local band play, Griffin had to go through a series of city council meetings to get approval.  Griffin and his three other friends were allowed 1,000 wristbands to give out during the allotted time of 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. for people to attend the party.

The men were expecting up to 600 people to arrive throughout the entire time, but even before it was four o’clock, just an hour before the party was scheduled to end, they had handed out every single one of their wrist bands.

“I am just very thankful everything went smoothly and everyone cooperated with us and the Platteville police. I hope the city sees how big this was and will approve of a “mineral block party” every year. Our entire goal was to create an annual event that will start a new tradition here at UW-Platteville. I would like to be able to come back years from now and see students still hosting this event but on a larger scale,” Griffin said.