The student section in Tiger Stadium is its own animal  — a sea of purple and gold swaying in unison with the same intensity as the LSU football team on the ground below.
For a number of University upperclassmen, this experience may never occur again because of an issue with ticket notification emails.
Every spring and summer, the LSU Ticket Office sends an email to every student — beginning with seniors and eventually trickling down to freshmen — notifying them when their specific football ticket ordering window will occur. This window is usually a six-day period, and students can choose a specific ticket package to order for the upcoming season.
But there appears to have been a problem in 2013.
A number of students are having these notification messages sent to their spam folders instead of their email inboxes, causing many upperclassmen to not notice their ticket ordering window until it is too late.
Hunter Geisman, assistant ticket manager at the LSU Ticket Office, says the office isn’t doing anything different when sending out the emails.
“We haven’t changed the process of emailing students for four or five years,” he said. “It’s nothing different on our end. I don’t know if the University changed filters or something.”
Geisman said that the ticket emails are sent through the ticket provider, so the issue may have stemmed from the provider and not the ticket office itself.
In order to help fix the problem, Student Government has set up an online ticket appeal form for students to submit their issues about their messages going straight to spam.
“Games in Death Valley are one of the hallmarks of the LSU student experience,” said SG President John Woodard in a news release. “We are concerned about reports of students missing the ordering deadline because the email was marked as spam, and we will work with the Athletic Department to ensure a favorable outcome for the students we represent.”
The appeal form, which can be found at sg.lsu.edu/ticketappeal, will give students another opportunity to order tickets if they missed their window because of email issues.
Ticket ordering will only be reopened for those students who missed their ordering period due to spam issues. If such a problem occurred, students are encouraged to use the ticket appeal form to submit a request by 4:30 p.m. Friday. Any student with a legitimate request can then look for a return email saying that they have another opportunity to order football tickets.
This solution comes at a prime time, as upperclassmen were becoming frustrated with the ordering process.
A number of seniors began to fear the worst, as they looked to their spam folders in disbelief and saw their final football season in Death Valley quickly fading away.
“By the time I found out [about the emails being sent to spam], I checked it, and my ordering period just expired the day before,” said mass communication senior Claire Langlois. “I know a lot of people are really upset that they missed their chance to get their tickets for their senior season.”
Many students discovered the issue through social media, as seniors who missed their ordering periods took to Facebook to express their concerns.
The posts eventually spread to several of the University’s Facebook groups, and comments from fellow seniors flooded news feeds.
“We’ve been using social media and its amazing powers … and I’ve been copying and pasting the same little status and it’s spreading like wildfire,” fifth-year ISDS senior Kayci Cedars said. “People are messaging me asking how they can help and if there’s anything they can do.”
Though it appears a temporary fix has been found, the problem still remains and does not appear to have a permanent solution.
The entire ordeal could go down as a learning experience for everyone involved.
“This is a huge issue that should never have occurred in the first place and needs to be addressed and fixed as soon as possible,” said communication studies senior Joshua Cohen.