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4/23/2012, 4:25pm

Tickets for Obama speech, ‘Jimmy Fallon’ appearance sold out

BY Katelyn Trela

It took about 12 total hours to give out all the tickets to today’s events featuring President Barack Obama.

As of 3:40 p.m. Monday, all tickets for both Obama’s speech on student loans and the 2 p.m. taping of NBC’s “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” were claimed.

Though there were barely any lines Monday for tickets to the speech, it still took almost the full six hours of distribution time for tickets to go.

Laura Hayes Morgan, director of University events, confirmed that all tickets for the speech were given out. It will take place at Carmichael Arena, which seats 8,010, and the taping will be at Memorial Hall, which seats 1,434.

Austin Gilmore, president of UNC’s Young Democrats, said more tickets were given than there were seats available. There will be overflow to a live broadcast in Woollen Gym.

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Seats were not assigned for the policy speech, unlike the “Late Night” taping.

After all regular seats in Memorial Hall were given out to students with confirmation emails — some of whom lined up as early as 5 a.m. Monday — a queue began for standby tickets.

Senior Matt Ragazzo found out about the standby line on Twitter.

“Someone posted on Twitter that they had 100 tickets left for the show,” he said. “I wasn’t even sure what that meant. I ran from my house to Memorial Hall expecting to get an actual ticket.”

Once at Memorial Hall, Ragazzo received a paper wristband and a ticket, which were both numbered. He is 52nd in the standby line.

All standby tickets were given out by 1:30 p.m. Monday. Once doors close at 1:30 p.m. today, the standby line will begin filling in empty seats.

The Memorial Hall box office confirmed that all available tickets had been distributed, but could not confirm the exact number given out. No representatives at NBC were free to comment.

Carmichael opens at 10 a.m. for seating, and ticket holders can begin lining up at 5 a.m. Doors open at Memorial Hall at noon. The show will air Wednesday at 12:35 a.m. on NBC.

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