TO THE EDITOR:
The recent revelation that our athletic department has quietly reduced the number of student tickets awarded this year raises some serious concerns.
Students are not attending games for free; rather, they pay athletic fees every semester for the privilege of attending sporting events. For the 2010-11 year, students are paying $271 in athletic fees — $6 more than in 2009-10. But rather than distributing more tickets to the highly coveted men’s basketball games, the athletic department has reduced the number of student tickets by 34 percent.
By raising the fee, and then selling one-third of last year’s student seats to the public, the ticket office is essentially selling these tickets twice.
Of equal concern is the athletic department’s decision to value the profitability of the athletic program over the good of the student body. We are still a public university, not a professional franchise. The student body should receive some priority.
Because it is somewhat difficult to anticipate the reliability of student attendance, we propose a ticket system that would reward fan loyalty, rather than blind luck.
A more intelligent, fair system would reward students who reliably used their tickets with a greater chance of winning, thereby offering incentives for consistent attendance.
Whatever the ticket system or the student attendance, the athletic department should not disadvantage the student body for higher ticket revenues. Despite what CAA President Brandon Finch believes about our student body’s fealty, we know many students who do love our school and, yet, have been excluded from the 2010-11 basketball season.
Christopher Jones
