After last week's football ticket sale notification debacle, many Badger fans are again disgruntled with the Wisconsin Athletic Ticket Office.
Though the UW Athletic Department maintains it has created the fairest distribution policy for men's hockey and basketball tickets, some students say the new system, unveiled Friday, leaves out the most faithful fans.
Under the new policies, men's hockey and basketball tickets will no longer require students to camp outside the Kohl Center for two weeks in order to secure seats.
Instead, a new point system will be used, in which students' total points will determine how close to the glass or baseline their seats will be.
The system assigns each student season ticket-holder a point total based on class standing and purchase history.
A freshman receives one point and every year thereafter acquires an additional point. Each student will receive one point for each year tickets were purchased beginning with the 2004-'05 season. When students register in groups, a point average is determined and seats are allocated by point total.
A bonus point can be earned for men's hockey if the student purchases tickets from May 1 through May 18.
Nate Lustig, UW-Madison junior and a co-owner of Exchange Hut, a student ticket networking website, said the new policies would hurt students overall.
""It screws freshmen and sophomores who are big fans,"" Lustig said. ""It will give the good seats to people who don't necessarily want to go. Seniors who had the third deck this year and who didn't care will get the good seats [next year].""
UW-Madison junior Dan Williamson is also concerned.
""It's disappointing that I can no longer get tickets with certain friends, just because they will bring down my point total,"" he said. ""If I did get tickets with the people I want to, I might not want them anymore since the tickets won't be as good.""
However, Vince Sweeney, senior associate athletic director for external relations, maintains this is the best policy the department could come up with based on a 2006 student-satisfaction survey on ticket distribution policies.
""Students we talked to weren't able to stand in line—they didn't have the time to do it,"" Sweeney said. ""We think the fact that a different priority system has been set up is better than seeing who can stand in line the longest.""
""Every plan we come up with can be picked apart like that, but at some point you have to decide that the plan we have is the best plan,"" Sweeney said.
Students have already seen football ticket distribution change, as only two years ago football fans had to camp out each week in order to get tickets.
However, while football distribution seems to be working out well for both students and the ticket office, Sweeney said it would not do the same for hockey or basketball.
""If we did that with hockey, we would probably have 45-50 lines of students trying to get the best seats. And you would have to do that 50 times during the year ... it just doesn't seem like the best thing to do.""
Other questions have risen about the new point system, ranging from how to deal with transfer students to why freshmen will pay for tickets that are almost guaranteed to be bad seats.
Another area of confusion for students is the new basketball distribution.
Of the 2100 season tickets, 1200 will be given away in the full season lottery, while the other 900 will be split into two separate half-season ticket packages, totaling 1800 available tickets.
The two half-season packages will be mixed, so students will get a wide variety of games, ensuring that one ticket package is not better than the other.
""We couldn't expand the seating sections, so we thought this was a way for more students to get tickets and go to games,"" Sweeney said. ""A lot of students told us that they couldn't go to all the games anyway. We just thought it was a better way to reach more students.""
Due to possible e-mail list problems, some students received the e-mail explaining the policies late or not at all. Full policy changes can be viewed at www.uwbadgers.com/tickets.
