It’s 10AM on the Sunday of Halloween and I’m ecstatic but not about my costume, candy, or a Halloween party.
I just successfully made it through online student section booking system for the number one football team in the nation, my Oregon Ducks. Through the random but lucky selection of my IP Address I got a student ticket for this upcoming Saturday’s football game against the University of Washington Huskies.
There are a variety of different methods used by universities for distributing tickets for football games. For years, diehard University of Oregon students camped out overnight outside Autzen Stadium each Monday before the upcoming game, waiting for 7AM to come around so they could claim one of the limited 1,000 or so student tickets. It was a school tradition. It became a favorite pastime, true fans showing their dedication to the point of sleeping in the rain and missing Monday class.
I missed my first class of college ever during my freshman year because I was waiting in line for my student ticket to my first football game.
A few years back, the University switched to an online system that is completely random, unstable, and basically results in a giant server overload: 10,000 students are logging on at the exact same minute to claim their ticket and a chance to be in the famous rowdy University of Oregon student section.
This year there was, for the first time, an option to pay an additional $200 on top of your included student fee to receive a student “season” ticket. In this situation your ticket is guaranteed and regardless of whether or not you attend the game, you have one of the student section spots without logging on. This took away about 1,000 from the pool of tickets distributed online.
Is my tuition not enough? The ticket office is capitalizing on what a pain the new online ticketing system was last year for students. It’s as if they took all the complaints and said, “If you want to complain, you can spend $200 more and get out of the hassle”.
To find out what some methods other schools use, I Twitter crowd-sourced a few students:
- Oregon State- Students camp out in lines by the thousands waiting for the Monday morning before each game to claim their tickets — the same way University of Oregon used to.
- Stanford- For most games, all students have the option of attending with a valid student ID card present. This year however, since Stanford is actually good, for the University of Southern California game they adopted an online ticket system. Students earn points for every athletic event attended, giving them priority for busy games.
- University of Georgia- Tickets are distributed in order by class credits earned, giving upperclassmen an advantage.
What system does your school use? Are you satisfied with your opportunity to attend school athletic events?
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