Editorial: Pick-up turns into chaos
Ticketing situation resembles circus.
KANSAN
Wednesday, November 14th, 2007
The evidence that the Nov. 24 football game between Kansas and Missouri at Arrowhead Stadium will be one for the record books was winding around Allen Fieldhouse Monday. Students sacrificed time and sleep to get prime seats. In hindsight, procedures for ticket dispensation and student seating could have been better thought out.
The first day of ticket pick-up for the football game coincided with the second round of ticket pick-up for men’s basketball. Two windows handled the football crowd while the other two did basketball tickets. This resulted in more traffic and confusion than there would have been if only one program’s tickets had been given out Monday.
Had pick-up been scheduled separately, all windows could have been open for one sport, increasing efficiency. Basketball pick-up should have taken place, say, the latter part of last week.
Standing in line to pick up football tickets meant that many students were unable to attend class Monday. Seeing as the primary objective of going to Kansas is, ideally, to gain a college education, it seems ridiculous to make students choose between class and football by scheduling pick-up on a weekday.
The most unbelievable aspect of Monday’s ticket pick-up was the prevalence of bribes—people paying other students to wait in line and get their tickets for them.
Bribery is at the very least distasteful. Those offering the bribes came off as lazy people who can’t be bothered to make sacrifices, while those taking the bribes were basically selling themselves out, as well as the people behind them in line.
Getting good student seats at a KU sporting event should not be based on how much cash someone is willing to fork over. We all pay the same flat fee for auspiciously the same quality of tickets.
The pick-up system for this game, however, invites such behavior by having students line up for the tickets.
The most reasonable solution would be to include the actual ticket in the student sports pack. Students could arrive at Arrowhead to line up for seats at a reasonable time before the game, and fill in a designated student section accordingly. This works for student seating at home games.
Designating a solid bloc of the stadium for student seating would be a better alternative than having a small section of seating at one endzone with the rest scattered throughout the rest of the stadium. Not only would students have better seats in general, but a consolidated student section would add to the experience of the game.
Should the Jayhawks advance, the Athletics Department is generously giving students free tickets to the Big 12 championship. Hopefully ticket pick-up for that event will go smoother, and a true student section will be fleshed out.
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