Last week Northwestern’s Suitcase Party decided to stop holding bar nights as fundraisers because they were losing money. Now they’ve changed their minds.

The Evanston City Council passed an amendment Monday that will allow people aged 18 to 21 to enter private events at bars after midnight. Because of the change, Suitcase Party hopes to hold such events again, said Kumi Wauthier, co-chairwoman of the club.

A city ordinance passed in October forced people under 21 out of bars at midnight.

Bars will go back to hosting events as they did before the ban, said Prairie Moon manager Paul White, despite the hopes some aldermen expressed at Monday night’s City Council meeting that bars would add more security measures and be more vigilant about keeping underage patrons from drinking.

“Nothing really changes,” White said. “It won’t require anything extra.”

All private events, not just fundraisers, will be open to 18- to 21-year-olds, said Patrick Casey, who serves on Evanston’s Liquor Control Review Board and is the city’s director of management and budget. That means birthday parties and philanthropic fundraisers alike are eligible as long as they notify the city two weeks in advance.

The total number of such events each year must not exceed 40.

Student groups that rely on bar nights to raise funds, such as Suitcase Party and Dance Marathon, said the amendment would improve fundraising efforts. They said they have suffered from the ban because it barred much of the student body from participating in the events.

Bar nights had traditionally been a sure-fire method of raising money, said Karen Schaefer, also a co-chairwoman of Suitcase Party.

“This year they haven’t been successful at all,” said Schaefer, a Weinberg senior.

Wauthier said now that the ban has been repealed, they hope to draw the crowds they previously had.

But Roger Hsieh, co-chairman of Special Olympics, said bar nights can not be as successful as they once were until the university lets student groups use The Keg of Evanston, 810 Grove St.

The Keg allowed events to be held on more nights than other bars before the university banned students from holding events there after the shooting this summer, Hsieh said.

Still, the amendment will help because “it’s a step in the right direction,” he said.

Hsieh said he was skeptical of the clause in the amendment that prevents bars from hosting fundraisers for a year if the bar receives three infractions for underaged drinking at any time. He said the provision would only punish student groups, who rely more on bar nights than the bars do.

“A couple hundred extra dollars to a bar would be great,” he said. “But a couple hundred extra dollars to a student group is more great.”

Scott Glazier, Special Events Chair of Dance Marathon and a Weinberg senior, said it was a compromise he was willing to make.

“That was the only way for the City of Evanston to agree to it,” Glazier said. “If that’s what needs to be done then so be it.”

Reach Jenny Song at [email protected]