Here’s the deal: There has been quite a bit of criticism surrounding this year’s ticket policy. Despite a few minor flaws, the Carolina Athletic Association feels that the current ticket policy is fundamentally good, and before it is condemned by the entire student body (or perhaps just a vocal few), your friends at the CAA would like to address a few common misconceptions:
- Misconception: Seniors and last year graduate students don’t get Phase priority for Duke tickets.
In reality, they do. The reason some seniors have a Phase 5 ticket is because Phases 1 through 4 are full of other students with senior-level credit hours. No joke, there really are that many of you.
- Misconception: You signed up for every lottery, yet got absolutely no tickets.
We get this one a lot, but sorry folks, it’s just not true. We ran the numbers from the distribution system and there is not a single student who signed up for all four lotteries prior to the Duke game who failed to get at least one set of tickets.
- Misconception: You pay for tickets, so you should get to go to every game.
Your student athletic fee of $271 per year actually goes toward providing students the opportunity to attend regular season athletic events. It also helps fund the Olympic sport programs in the areas of operating budgets and coaches’ salaries, and is used to help maintain athletic fields and facilities as well as to renovate facilities like Carmichael Auditorium. Have you been working out on that Spring Break bod at Rams Head or the Student Recreation Center? Well, you can because of this fee.
- Misconception: The reduction in the number of student seats has made it harder for students to attend games.
Depending on the game, the number of available seats was reduced by as much as 34 percent, although seats were only removed from the upper-level sections. The disappointing part is that students have filled, on average, only 60 percent of the available seats at even the most crowded of games. We get it, sometimes drinking a beer and watching the game on your 60-inch TV sounds better than sitting in Section 216, but we have tried everything — overbooking games, redistributing tickets through Turn-Back and Standby Lines — and students still haven’t packed the Smith Center.
