A number of students who believed their final season in Tiger Stadium slipped away have gotten a second chance, thanks to an online appeal form provided by Student Government.
The ticket ordering notification emails, which would normally be found in students’ inboxes weeks before their respective ordering windows, were missed by a number of upperclassmen because their emails were being sent to spam. Last week, social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter exploded with irate LSU students who missed their football ticket ordering windows.
Once students began voicing their displeasure on Facebook, SG took notice.
“I sent it to our Chief of Staff and told him that we needed to jump on this, because if it happened to a couple of people, then it likely happened to a lot, and it turns out it did,” said SG Senate Director of Communications David Holley. “That’s what prompted [SG jumping on the issue] was just seeing a couple people posting on social media ticked off about it.”
After enough students complained, SG set up a form for students to appeal their missed tickets.
The appeal form was made available at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday. By 11:00 p.m. that evening, 85 students had submitted appeal assistance requests. By 4:30 p.m. Friday, 334 students submitted a request.
Of those 334 students, 61 percent were seniors and 10 percent were juniors. Forty-eight sophomores and 15 freshmen also appealed, but this was most likely because they believed they had missed their ordering window when, in fact, their windows hadn’t arrived yet, according to Holley.
Thirty-two grad students or fifth-year seniors also applied.
Holley and SG Chief of Staff Joe Gipson worked to set up the appeal form and create a document to send to the Athletic Department in order to help students get their tickets.
The document was then sent to the Athletic Department, and the ticketing window was re-opened for any students who faced the spam issue.
Though SG is happy with the student turnout, there are still problems that need to be solved.
“I’m really excited that we had such a large turnout … but at the same time, it’s really concerning, because if students are missing emails that are so important to their experience here, what does that mean for the way our servers are working, and do we need to re-evaluate the way we’re getting out messages to students?” said SG Vice President Taylor Parks.
Parks also said that the spam issue may have stemmed from the recent Gmail update, as the Ticket Office has stated that it has not changed its process of sending out emails to students.
Regardless, she hopes more solutions will be made available following this debacle.
“I’m hoping there are going to be more options made available in the future for people who didn’t have the ability to access things like Student Government, because I don’t want that many people to miss out on football tickets,” Parks said.
In the end, the administration feels that its efforts pushed the organization in the right direction heading into the fall semester.
“I hope that, for us, we’re able to remember that we served a valuable purpose, and we have to be in tune to what students’ needs are,” Holley said. “I’m really proud of the way we performed, and I hope that we’ll be able to continue to do that, and I think it set this administration off in the right direction.”