It’s 9 a.m. You’re in class, and your professor banned laptops because some study claimed that hand-writing notes leads to better retention and focus. But you’re not focused. You’re watching in agony as the clock ticks, hoping football tickets won’t sell out in the first 20 minutes. But they did. They always do, and frankly, we’re tired of it.
It just simply defies common sense to have a first-come, first-serve ticket policy during our classes. Changing the time to 9 or 10 p.m. would be far more ideal — not only are more students awake than at 9 a.m., but we’re also typically out of extracurricular activities and jobs.
It’s also difficult to understand why the football program could not just adopt the basketball lottery system. Though it’s not perfect, the lottery is both flexible on time and gives preference to seniority. And upperclassmen deserve these tickets most — no sight caused greater collective pain than our measly five wins in the last two seasons under Fedora. The interceptions were plentiful, the student section half empty and there were no $10 White Claws to drown our sorrows.
We don’t blame the University for wanting to improve last year’s ticket policy. First-come, first-serve at gates had its downsides, such as the Virginia Tech game when students were denied entry after 20 minutes. But now, we’re denied entry after 20 minutes because we had responsibilities other than logging into our GoHeels account at 9 a.m. Under the old gate-entry system, at least every student was actually going to the game — even if we were leaving early when we started losing by 30.
This season, upperclassmen without tickets are left with the painful sight of freshmen at Sigma Alpha Epsilon getting too hammered and P2P-ing back to HoJo, tickets still in hand. If a lottery system were in place, they could penalize those who order tickets and don’t show up to the game.
Admittedly the new ticket policy, playing on the FOMO in our psyche, could be credited for the increased attendance this year. Despite two early wins, our program won’t win a championship, and likely not even the ACC Coastal title. However, the student section alone has made us seem like a legitimate football school.
The sudden demand of tickets with the online first-come, first-serve policy has descended our ticket system into classism. Just hours after the UNC v. Clemson tickets sold out, UNC-Chapel Hill class Facebook pages flooded with people selling tickets, in which wealthy kids can afford to outbid other students to attend the game. On the other hand, broke college kids are forced to wait hours in a stand-by line with slim chances of being admitted at all.
It’s nice to see Mack Brown back at UNC with a competitive football team. It shouldn’t be so impossible for upperclassmen with a 9 a.m. to see it in person.
