🏈 Group requests unused ticket punishments- From CW

[TerryP]

Updated: Wednesday, March 4, 2009

After listening to the concerns of UA students at the Jan. 26 SGA town hall meeting, the student football ticket commission has submitted proposed policy changes to the Athletic Ticket Department to be considered for implementation in the 2009 football season.


Richard Byrd, head of the student football ticket commission and SGA chief of staff, said the purpose of the commission was to review all student ticket policies for away, home and postseason football games.


“In reviewing the policies of the 2008 football season, the commission’s main goal is to work to allow the maximum amount of student access to home games by optimizing ticket usage,” Byrd said.


This goal is made evident through several of the policy changes submitted for review including punishment for three unused tickets on a student’s account.


The commission’s submitted “Recommendations and Rationale” to the Athletic Ticket Department reads, “Once a student has three ‘resets’ [unused, non-donated, non-transferred tickets], they immediately become ineligible for postseason tickets for that year, and are also ineligible to purchase tickets for the following year.”


Although UA President Witt had not seen the list of recommendations when he spoke to The Crimson White on Friday, he had a similar idea about what to do about students who do not use their tickets.


“I think without really having to reach very far, you could come up with a plausible set of explanations about why a student could not use his or her ticket for a given game,” Witt said. “That said, I think that the purchase of a ticket in a way is a privilege, and you owe it to your classmates, if you’re not going to use it, to get it back into the system.”


In case of emergencies and to field complaints the commission also submitted a recommendation to set up an SGA board and an appeal process in August with the start of the football season.


“The commission wanted to leave an option for circumstances we didn’t foresee to satisfy students. We know there are often circumstances beyond control and we wanted to be able to set up an appeals council for those cases,” Byrd said.


When asked if he thought the proposal involving penalties would be met with much student opposition Byrd said, “I fully expect people to understand the commission’s reasoning.

Three tickets is a reasonable number, especially when the system is simple to use and transferring tickets takes less than minutes. I don’t expect any real opposition.”


Another major issue discussed in the commission’s submitted proposal dealt with the purchasing of student tickets. The commission recommended the regular season purchasing process remain relatively the same with two conditions. The first condition addresses the problems dealing with the technical difficulties met by students in previous years when attempting to purchase tickets.


“We are working with the ticket department to ensure the servers will be able to support the amount of students online at the same time. In past years, students have been prevented from buying tickets due to security settings on their personal computers or have been unable to log on because of servers crashing,” Byrd said.


In order to combat this issue, the commission’s second condition for the student purchasing system is the creation of an information campaign through the partnering of SGA and the athletics and university administration.


“In addition to making sure the RollTide.com’s servers are capable of supporting the amount of students online to buy tickets, SGA will also work to head a large information campaign on everything students will need to know about tickets,” Byrd said. “We’re hoping to have a potential test website to ensure the servers will hold up. We’re also planning on educating students on the details of the security settings on their personal computers in order to have everything ready to go by ticket sale day.”


Along with the proposals dealing with unused tickets and ticket sales, the commission also reviewed policies concerning postseason tickets. The commission recommended students who attend regular season home games be given priority for SEC Championship and bowl game tickets over those who upgrade more than three tickets to paper tickets. Postseason tickets were also proposed to be sold according to the proportion of student in graduate and undergraduate studies, much like the allocation of Sugar Bowl tickets for the 2008 season.


“In order to fairly distribute tickets to the whole student body, we believe postseason tickets should be available based on the proportion of students in graduate and undergraduate studies. We proposed 20 percent of the total population be sold to graduate students leaving the remaining 80 percent to undergraduate students,” Byrd said.


Overall, Byrd said he thought the policy that would have the greatest impact on the students is the proposed policy regarding unused tickets.


“There were too many unused tickets this last season and I believe this is the best policy we can put into place to help more students be able to attend home games. While having a penalty system set in place may not always be the best, sometimes it is the most effective and efficient.”

 

[It Takes Eleven]

It's a good start.

 

[alagator]

Personally, I would adjust the 'reset' number to 'two' from three.

And once that number was reached, not only would you not be able to purchase post-season tickets, you would forfeit any tickets for the remainder of that regular season.

Also, an adjustment needs to be made to the Tide Totals program. There should be a penalty for people buying tickets to the 'lesser' sports to accumulate points for football tickets but then not using the tickets to those other sports. A fanny in the seat is just as important to OUR athletes in those sports as the money is to the football program. Tide Totals should perhaps be tied to ticket USAGE and not just PURCHASE.

 

[BamaFan425]

I went to this town hall meeting as a part of my SGA duties. It was a good meeting and lots of good ideas. I like the punishment idea. If you can't donate or get rid of your ticket and just let it go unused, then you're not trying. Takes less than 5 minutes to transfer or donate a student ticket.

 

[Kirk Van de Graaff]

I went to this town hall meeting as a part of my SGA duties. It was a good meeting and lots of good ideas. I like the punishment idea. If you can't donate or get rid of your ticket and just let it go unused, then you're not trying. Takes less than 5 minutes to transfer or donate a student ticket.

Well said Ben.

 

[rammajamma]

I think its great that they are addressing this issue. I wonder if they have ever considered this, say 30 minutes or so before kickoff, let non ticket holding students with a act card and in to fill those empty seats.