The Traveler

Issue date: 4/24/09 Section: News

Media Credit: Cody Bennett UA students will have to turn in a voucher and confirm they are attending the Razorback football game a week prior to the game. Otherwise, their ticket will be sold to the general public.

Students be forewarned: if you do not claim your seat at football games next year, somebody else will.

University officials will begin to use a ticket voucher system that requires students to validate their student tickets the week before each football game - or watch their seat go to the general public, said Carter Ford, president of the Associated Student Government. Ford has approved the system, and it will be put in place next fall, he said.

Next year, students will receive a package of coupons when they buy season tickets in August, said Mark Scoby, ticket master at the Razorback Ticket Office. Student tickets will be sold at four locations: the Arkansas Union, the Razorback Ticket Office, the Hog Heaven store at Bud Walton Arena and some place in the area of the business college, said Chris Wyrick, assistant athletic director. The week before each home football game, students must visit one of those locations again to verify that they will attend the game, he said. At that location, they will exchange their coupon for a ticket, Scoby said.

After the Wednesday before the game, the university will begin to sell "student" tickets to the general public at $50 each, Wyrick said. Students still have a chance to pick up their ticket, provided the game has not sold out by the time they do, he said.

"We want students in the student seats," Wyrick said. "If the students have not filled up the bleachers, the bleachers should be filled."

It is because of the empty bleachers on the upper part of Reynolds Razorback Stadium that this change is necessary, Ford said. The university puts bleachers on the upper student section to ensure all students have a seat, but those seats are mostly unfilled during games, Ford said. The bleachers cost $160,000 a year to put up, he said.

"We need overflow student seating, but we haven't been utilizing the space," Ford said.

As a solution, the athletic department had three options: take down the bleachers, raise student ticket prices to $10 a game or institute the voucher system, Ford said. Taking down the bleachers would prevent some students from attending games, and after asking for student opinion, the ASG decided that most were against increased student ticket prices, he said.

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