When long-standing LSU rival Ole Miss runs onto the football field this Saturday, there will be 740 members of the general public sitting in the student section of Tiger Stadium. Usually the student section is just that: the section of seats specifically set aside for students who attend University football games. But in response to students leaving a large portion of their tickets unused during the past two seasons – by an average of about 4,000 each game – the Athletic Department has sold off some spots in the section to members of the general public. It is unfortunate and rather hard to believe that at a university which prides itself on its football team as much as LSU does, students are simply not attending home games. This should serve as a wake-up call to students, letting them know that the administration has no problem downsizing the number of spots allotted to students. And the wake-up call should be taken seriously, especially considering that the department is pondering whether to reduce the number of spots allotted to students permanently. Yes, students should be more willing to attend games. But it is not hard to believe that many spots in the section have been left unfilled over the past two seasons because the tickets are unnecessarily hard to give away prior to the game. In the past, it was as simple as asking around to see who needed a ticket and then selling or even giving it away to someone who was able to attend the game. Issues such as unforeseen conflicts or emergencies were not a problem because the procedure was simple. Enter pointless bureaucracy. Now students have to go online together, transfer a ticket, accept that the ticket has been transferred, pay a handling fee and then print out the ticket – on their own paper. The University has even gotten so cheap that students literally have to buy the ink and paper for their tickets themselves. The University is seeing the effects of a bad system that has only gotten worse in recent seasons. But this should not only serve as a wake-up call to students. It should show the University that imposing bar codes, point systems and complicated transfer procedures upon students is a bad idea. Students are not going to tolerate them, and they should be abolished. Administrators, take a look at what happens when you try to fix something that wasn’t broken. It doesn’t work.
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