We like $1 tickets, thank you
The Traveler Editorial Board
Issue date: 4/24/09 Section: Opinion
When we first heard about the new voucher system for football tickets, we were mildly indignant. We saw the additional step to convert coupons to tickets as unnecessary and aggravating.
Students' schedules are not exactly eaten up with free time," we thought. When are they going to find time to venture to the Razorback Ticket Office - or wherever else - to claim their tickets the week before a game?
We doubted the football program needed whatever additional cash the resale of student tickets might provide. We found it hard to believe a program that is allotted $11 million by the university (to say nothing of the untold millions it receives from the Razorback Foundation) would need an extra $50 here and there.
We suspected that the eager Razorback fans who'd scoop up student tickets - however excited they'd be to have scored tickets at the last minute - would still lack the raw energy the student section demands.
In other words, we disapproved of the measure entirely. We might have even railed against it to our friends one day in the cafeteria.
But, then, we learned more about why athletic department officials, university administrators and student government representatives agreed to institute this system.
Students haven't shown up to the games in the numbers necessary to fill all available student seating.
And those empty seats - specifically, the upper bleachers of Reynolds Razorback Stadium - are expensive. In fact, the bleachers cost $160,000 a year, said ASG President Carter Ford.
To recoup that expense - which, we'd like to point out, it is reasonable to want to do - the athletic department could take down the bleachers, increase student ticket prices to $10 a game or institute the voucher system.
In light of those three options, the voucher system began to look a little less dismal to us.
We admit, we don't find the upper bleachers very attractive as a seating option, and we wish that the chancellor's "Students First" motto extended to enlarging the student section horizontally rather than vertically, but the voucher system is eminently more appealing than higher ticket prices.
So, while a part of us might wish university officials would just dismantle the bleachers rather than inconvenience us with an extra obstacle to cheap football viewing, a larger part of us accepts this decision as a sensible one.
Small wonder that university officials - who are also loyal Razorback fans - would want the stadium to be as full as possible come game day. And understandable, too, that they would trust students - and their commitment to the Hogs - to overcome a mild annoyance to continue to cheer on the football team.
Let's prove them right. After all, we might have had to pay $10.
Students' schedules are not exactly eaten up with free time," we thought. When are they going to find time to venture to the Razorback Ticket Office - or wherever else - to claim their tickets the week before a game?
We doubted the football program needed whatever additional cash the resale of student tickets might provide. We found it hard to believe a program that is allotted $11 million by the university (to say nothing of the untold millions it receives from the Razorback Foundation) would need an extra $50 here and there.
We suspected that the eager Razorback fans who'd scoop up student tickets - however excited they'd be to have scored tickets at the last minute - would still lack the raw energy the student section demands.
In other words, we disapproved of the measure entirely. We might have even railed against it to our friends one day in the cafeteria.
But, then, we learned more about why athletic department officials, university administrators and student government representatives agreed to institute this system.
Students haven't shown up to the games in the numbers necessary to fill all available student seating.
And those empty seats - specifically, the upper bleachers of Reynolds Razorback Stadium - are expensive. In fact, the bleachers cost $160,000 a year, said ASG President Carter Ford.
To recoup that expense - which, we'd like to point out, it is reasonable to want to do - the athletic department could take down the bleachers, increase student ticket prices to $10 a game or institute the voucher system.
In light of those three options, the voucher system began to look a little less dismal to us.
We admit, we don't find the upper bleachers very attractive as a seating option, and we wish that the chancellor's "Students First" motto extended to enlarging the student section horizontally rather than vertically, but the voucher system is eminently more appealing than higher ticket prices.
So, while a part of us might wish university officials would just dismantle the bleachers rather than inconvenience us with an extra obstacle to cheap football viewing, a larger part of us accepts this decision as a sensible one.
Small wonder that university officials - who are also loyal Razorback fans - would want the stadium to be as full as possible come game day. And understandable, too, that they would trust students - and their commitment to the Hogs - to overcome a mild annoyance to continue to cheer on the football team.
Let's prove them right. After all, we might have had to pay $10.
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