Student Government and Athletic Department officials are working to change the way student football tickets are allocated this football season.
The changes will be made this fall to both regular season and post season tickets.
For the regular season, SG Vice President Patrick Downs said undergraduate students must have a 2.0 GPA or higher and cannot be a sixth year senior. If the student violates either of these stipulations, Downs said the student will be put at the end of priority ticket ordering with freshman.
The Athletic Department also may change the length of time available for students to order tickets, Downs said. A student would only be able to order tickets during a particular time window set by the Athletic Department.
In the current system, students are able to order tickets any time after their priority ordering date.
Student organization members will no longer be able to order two sets of season tickets either, Downs said.
In past seasons, members of student organizations were allowed to order two sets of tickets per person, which were considered guest passes.
Brian Broussard, Ticket Office manager, said all students should have an equal opportunity to get one set of tickets and that allowing some students to get two sets is unfair.
“It’s an equality issue,” Broussard said.
Instead of randomly picking which students will get post-season tickets from a lottery as the current system allows, the Athletic Department will enact a point system created by SG to give priority to students who actively support LSU athletics.
Downs said students will get points for attending all sporting events, and those points will be tallied to give priority to students who want coveted post-season tickets.
University student Matt Thomas and Downs agree that the point system is designed to not only make it more fair for students who patron LSU athletic events, but it also will encourage students to attend sporting events they may not have gone to before, such as soccer or track.
Thomas, a business junior who gave SG President Michelle Gieg and Downs the idea of creating a point system, said the new system will be better than a lottery because it will reward devoted fans.
“The more deserving fans should get the tickets first,” Thomas said. “Lotteries aren’t effective.”
Broussard said the Athletic Department and SG still are working on exactly how they will keep track of students’ attendance, but he said they will have some kind of barcode system.
Broussard said they are looking at where the barcode will be placed — whether on the ticket itself or on a season pass card. He said the barcode will allow the Athletic Department to keep track of who actually attends the sporting events, instead of who simply buys the tickets.
“We feel it should be based on actually going,” Broussard said.
Broussard said the Athletic Department is allowing SG to make the decisions on the point system, such as how many points each sporting event will count for.
SG is creating a task force devoted to making decisions on football ticket allocation, Gieg said. The task force will advise Gieg and Downs and their executive staff, she said.
Once final decisions are made for the regular season and post-season ticket allocation, Broussard said the Athletic Department will send e-mails to all students to keep them posted.
The point system has not been finalized, Downs said, but it will be enacted for this football season.