In hopes of gaining student input on the way the university delegates UW men's basketball tickets, the UW-Madison Athletic Department sent a survey via e-mail to all UW-Madison students Thursday.
Currently, the athletic department sells season tickets to students in the spring until all but 400 seats are sold out. The department reserves these seats for incoming freshmen, who must enter a lottery to win a seat, according Hope Wallace, the Associated Students of Madison's Shared Governance Committee chair and UW-Madison sophomore.
Because tickets sell out to other Badger fans in advance, the university cannot increase the 20 percent of Kohl Center tickets that constitute the student section, according to Shared Governance Committee Member and UW-Madison sophomore Matt Rink.
Even with this obstacle, the Shared Governance Committee approached the athletic department last fall, proposing fairer ways of delegating basketball tickets, Wallace said.
Wallace added this effort comes at a time when men's basketball is particularly popular at UW-Madison because of the team's success.
\[The Athletic Department's] prediction is that there are going to be even more people that want tickets,"" she said.
According to Wallace, athletic department officials liked the idea of implementing seat seniority. If they adopt this plan, all students must enter a lottery in the fall to obtain a season ticket, but seniors will have four chances to win the lottery, juniors will have three, etc.
Rink said the governance committee favored another plan in which those who have held tickets in the past will have priority over other students in gaining access to the following year's tickets, but said he forsees possible problems with this.
""If you give priority to the people who have tickets now, what about the people who just happened to not get them freshman year but wanted them?"" Rink questioned.
Wallace said she stressed to the athletic department that the committee's opinions did not represent the entire student body's, which led to the surveys seeking campus-wide input.
The athletic department favors the seniority plan, but will probably not implement it if the surveys shows students are against it, according to Wallace. She added UW-Madison officials are awaiting students' responses on the second proposal and have mixed reactions to it.
Though she said she did not know when the Athletic Department will reach conclusions based on the data, she said the department works quickly and students should expect to see results soon.
