Hold your horses Badger fans. Before you start freaking out about another change in the student ticket process, take a second and understand the pros and the cons of the new plan.
I feel like students on this campus imagine this great utopia where football, basketball and hockey tickets are completely attainable and cheap. Well, do you want it to be easy to get tickets or do you want to set a record for wins and be a top-tier athletic school?
You can't have both.
""There is no perfect system,"" Senior Associate Athletic Director Vince Sweeney told me Monday. And he's right.
I can just hear the fans right now saying: ""Well, we can have good teams, we just need to make sure the die-hard fans win the lotteries and get to sit in the front rows.""
To be honest, that would be great. I completely agree that if there are students in the front rows of any section, it should be the ones that care the most. Unfortunately, when you have thousands of fans clamoring for tickets, how do you decide who the die-hards are?
I have no problem criticizing my own paper on this issue. Monday's Daily Cardinal said that the die-hard fans were slamming the new ticket distribution process. Meanwhile, the only two people quoted in the story as being against the new plan were the owner of ExchangeHut.com (might as well call him a scalper) and one other fan. Since when do two people represent 40,000 students?
The only way to get a more accurate feeling from the entire campus is a survey, which ironically is exactly what caused the athletic department to look into changing the student ticketing process in the first place. In October 2006, UW Athletics contacted Chamberlain Research Consultants to run a survey to determine the student satisfaction with the ticket process. The results were obviously skewed by whether the participant of the survey received tickets or not, but Sweeney said the survey indicated that overall satisfaction was ""mediocre at best.""
You, the students, asked for this change.
Now, I get the feeling that the more accurate feeling on this campus is one of skepticism rather than the outrage that was reported Monday, but I'm sure those fans that had front row/glass seats last year are upset.
One obvious con to the new process is that there will be 900 fewer full season student basketball tickets. The upside, however, is that 3,000 people will now receive at least some tickets, instead of just 2,100 getting the whole season. For those who have gotten tickets in the past, they are going to be mad that now they might only be stuck with half a season. To those people, I say that you have to remember you are not guaranteed tickets for next season, and now your chances are greater for at least getting some tickets. Also, these people who got tickets are the minority. Most people who apply for basketball tickets don't get them. The majority of applicants for basketball tickets should be happy that the chances of winning next year are now greater—even if they only get half of the season. And keep in mind that the half-season packages will also be half the price.
So you won the lottery. Congrats, dude. But now you have to find a group and you have to keep in mind the new point system. The good news is that you don't have to wait in line for two weeks to get in the front row. The bad news is that you have to find a group of seniors to sit with if you want the best seats.
Let's return to the ""die-hards"" argument from earlier. As much as I would love to see the best fans sit in the front rows, it's just not possible to determine who those people are at a school this big. The only other fair way to do it is to let upper-class students get the first crack at the top seats. That is exactly what the new process is attempting to do. You might not be able to get tickets with your best friends, but you won't have to sit in line—the other big issue here.
According to Sweeney, there have not been any major issues with the line since they have been allowing it. By issues, I am referring to thefts, assaults, riots, etc. To be honest, I'm amazed. The large line outside the Kohl Center just seems like an accident waiting to happen, and it is a detriment our academic studies.
Again, like Sweeney said, there is no perfect plan. Some people are going to agree with it and some people are not. Personally, I think that a year from now, students are going to be happy with the new plan.
In March I sat in a conference room with a number of UW students that were invited by the UW Athletic Department to discuss the new plan that was on the table. The majority of us supported it, but admitted that the first reaction by the students would be a negative one.
Give it some time and weigh both the pros and cons. A year from now, I think you will find that you like it. If not, it's not much of a change, because according to that survey, you weren't happy in October anyway.
Adam is a junior majoring in journalism. He can be contacted at hoge@dailycardinal.com.
