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Student Ticket Lottery

By BSD

This doesn't concern me since I haven't been a Penn State student in ten years, but it's a hot topic in the message boards so I wanted to give people a place to sound off on it. This year for the first time ever student tickets will be distributed through a lottery.

For the 2007 season, Penn State football student season tickets will be issued via online lottery registration and random selection, not on a first-come, first-served basis as in years past. The online lottery process, which worked very well for issuing student tickets to last year's regular season games at Notre Dame and Ohio State, as well as the 2007 Outback Bowl, offers a number of benefits to students and results in the most fair means of allowing the maximum number of students to participate.

Obviously a lot of people are upset they are doing away with the first-come-first-serve method. And why not? At least you felt like you had some control there. I always turned my application around right away when I got it and always got tickets when I was a student. Now you could turn in your application right away and lose out to a guy who sat on his for a few weeks. I don't blame them one bit.

But on the other hand, tickets are getting so popular now that turning the application around right away may not even be enough. So the university is trying to make things fair and I can understand that. But maybe there is a better way. I have a proposal.

Why not make it dependent on GPA? Good students are guaranteed tickets while everyone else goes into the lottery. "But Mike," you say, "I'm in Nuclear Engineering with a 3.2 and it's not fair to have to compete with a kid in Art History." Ok fine. Make it weighted. If you're in engineering you need a 3.2 to be guaranteed tickets. If your major is Basket Weaving, you need a 3.7. If you're an education major, well, maybe showing up for class is a good start.

(I kid I KID! I used to have an education major for a roommate. All his friends were education majors. They did nothing but drink all semester until the final week when they cranked out a half dozen papers and then they drank all through finals week.)

UPDATE 4/1/07 9:00 PM

The students spoke up and the university changed their mind.

In less than a day, thousands of Penn State students have spoken up on various social networking web sites to say they don’t want a lottery to determine who can purchase season football tickets in 2007. Most of them want to use the same system that was in place last year -- when a record number of students tried to purchase tickets as soon as they went on sale.

Although Penn State has the second largest stadium in the nation and one of the largest student sections in the country, thousands of students said they are worried they may be left to watch the games on television.

"It became very apparent, very quickly, that most Penn State students want the first-come, first serve, system," said Greg Myford, associate athletic director. "So that’s what we are going to do."

You see that? "Social Networking Websites"? I guess I'll take credit for that since they weren't very specific, thank you very much. We're just trying to make the world a better place here at BSD.

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