The UW Athletic Department sent an e-mail Monday notifying students of changes to the football season ticket policy.
The changes include a lottery system for ticket purchase, general admission for each section, tickets that can only be picked up at the ticket office (as opposed to being mailed out) and section P is now accessible to all students, despite its history as an upperclassmen-only section.
The Athletic Department listened to student concerns about availability of tickets and created a lottery similar to those used for hockey and basketball tickets - except previous ownership of season tickets will not be considered and half season ticket packages will not exist.
They also outlined the dates to sign up for the lottery and for the distribution of tickets well ahead of time. We embrace this change and hope those who did not have the opportunity to buy tickets last year will now find the process to be equitable.
Another problem students frequently encountered was the ongoing struggle to stand in their assigned seat. We congratulate the Athletic Department in realizing the futility of this system and welcome general admission for each section.
The decision to stop mailing out tickets has a solid foundation, since tickets were sometimes lost in the mail, creating a litany of problems. Students have to pick up tickets for basketball and hockey, so this action is hardly groundbreaking. We have no problem with this decision.
The main problem with the new rules comes with the new designation of section P. According to the Athletic Department, students who arrive the earliest, regardless of class standing, will have first crack at the most desirable seats."" We question which students the Athletic Department questioned while coming to this conclusion - they were most likely underclassmen.
The tradition associated with having an exclusively upperclassmen section is now gone. Now we must entrust the duty of starting the famous wave at Camp Randall to inexperienced fans. The enmity between section O and section P is now gone.
On the whole, the Athletic Department did well in instituting these new changes. If they could only reverse their section P decision - upperclassmen and the student section in general would be better off.
