American Notes Florida

To keep the 300,000 odd col-

lege students who make the annual spring-break pilgrimage to Fort Lauderdale from turning the event into the usual brawling bacchanal, authorities this year are trying to fence them in and dry them out. One new feature is a half- mile-long stretch of 4 1/2-ft.-high concrete and chain-link wall, which separates the beach crowds from heavily trafficked Route A1A. Another is a so-called open-container law, which separates seasonal hell raisers from their booze by banning drinking in the beach area.

Police, freed by the wall from some of their previous crowd-control duties, have enforced liquor laws by making more than 1,500 arrests in the beach area over the past four weeks, vs. 889 during all six weeks of the 1985 break. But merchants do not want Lauderdale to get too quiet: last year the college crowd pumped $120 million into their tills.