MADISON, Wis. (AP) -- One of the nation's most enduring and well-known college beer bashes will go on but against a darker backdrop this year.

Thousands of college students will gather Saturday for the annual Mifflin Street Block Party in Madison, where students party hop between houses stocked with kegs all day.

But the spring celebration comes just one month after the slaying of University of Wisconsin-Madison student Brittany Zimmermann in her apartment a few blocks away. The murder, and two others nearby that also remain unsolved, has police and university officials warning students to keep strangers out of their homes.

Zimmermann's family and friends will also be at the event selling doughnuts and pizza to raise money for a scholarship fund established in her name.

The block party is a UW-Madison tradition dating to 1969.