Demand for Fairer Ticket System

One of the most stressful times for a student at the University of Alabama is the morning season football tickets go on sale. Most students will do anything to have one of those coveted seats in Bryant-Denny Stadium. Because the football program at Alabama is successful and has had winning records for the past few years, the tickets are in high demand. Every school has a different process for distributing student tickets. However, Alabama’s is one that needs changing. Students at the university should demand that the athletic department change the way student football tickets are issued. There are many other ways the tickets can be distributed such as taking into consideration the amount of hours each student has and how involved they are on campus.

As many of the students already know, the system currently uses an online database to distribute the tickets. It is opened at six o’clock in the morning on a certain day, and every student who wants football tickets must log into the same website. Once the student logs on, he or she is most likely put into a “virtual waiting room” where it supposedly tracks what time a person enters. The system was designed to put people through to purchase tickets just as a normal sequence would or in other words a “first come first serve” process. However, this did not seem to be the case for many students trying to buy tickets. Ali Woodbury, a junior at the University of Alabama, recalls her horrible experience last spring. She said that she and four of her sorority sisters met up to register for tickets together at someone’s apartment. After logging on to the site on their laptops, they were all placed into the virtual waiting room except for one girl. The one girl who was not transferred to the virtual waiting room was the last girl to log into the site and the first to receive her tickets. After she bought her tickets, her computer repeatedly allowed her access to purchase more tickets. The system is based on technology, which we all know is very unreliable at times. Another problem with the system is that many underclassmen are granted tickets before juniors and seniors. This is unfair. The more hours a student has, the longer he or she has been affiliated with the university, and the better the student’s chances should be of getting season tickets.

There are many solutions that would make this process easier for students. One possible solution is to create an allotted time for different groups of students to sign up. Just like registering for classes, students will be divided into sections based on how many earned credit hours they have. This will determine how soon one is able to purchase tickets. For example, if a student has 80 hours, he or she will register before those who only have 60 hours. This will allow upperclassmen guaranteed tickets, if they want them, rather than distributing them based on a “first come, first serve” basis. If the athletic program did use this option for getting student tickets, it would also cut down many of the students’ technology complaints. Many students say that with a large portion of the students at the university logging on the same web page to get tickets at the same time causes the site to shut down and not work properly. If the athletic program chooses this option, it will limit how many people are trying to access the site at once. This will hopefully enable the site’s virtual waiting room to function properly and disperse tickets in a first come first serve line.

Another solution that would make this process fairer would be to distribute football tickets based on how involved students are on campus. Having friends at the University of South Carolina, I have seen the benefits of this program. They instituted a program that kept track of each particular student’s involvement on the campus. When students attended other athletic events, guest lectures, or community service drives, points are added to their ID card. Once it came time to purchase season football tickets, the students who had the most involvement points were granted access to buy tickets first. Once those people purchased the tickets, it was reopened to the next set of students and so forth. This system allows a fair distribution of tickets. It encourages students to become involved in other activities on campus and rewards them by granting them early access to purchase football tickets. If the University of Alabama instituted this policy, the student body would be more involved in sports and other activities that may not get as much attention as football. This would also help with the overloading of the ticket website and boost the overall morale of the university.