With new student ticketing policies being implemented Monday by the Student Government Athletics Commission, more students will have a chance to enjoy tailgating and attending football games and men’s basketball games.
Students will be allotted 10,000 tickets to football games, filling roughly one-sixth of Carter-Finley Stadium. The RBC Center — if that is the arena’s name in the fall — will have nearly one-fourth of the seats filled with students with 4,500 of the 19,700 tickets available distributed to students.
Executive Traditions Commission Chair Andy Walsh, a junior in political science, said the decision to add more tickets was not just to make students happy, but also had to do with a growing population of students at the University.
“I think the athletics department views the attendance of students as an essential key for on-the-field success,” Walsh said. “Them giving us more tickets is not only appreciating us wanting to go to these events, but also understanding that we have to accommodate a growing fan base here at State, which is great.”
At the beginning of the year, students are awarded loyalty points according to their standing as an upperclassman or underclassman. Seniors and graduate students start the season with nine points, juniors will begin with seven points and sophomores and freshmen will open with five points and three points, respectively.
Throughout the season, students will be able to earn one loyalty point by signing up for events and attending games. Students will also be awarded one additional loyalty point for showing up 45 minutes before a game begins.
With the loyalty points system being a tough battle for incoming freshmen, Walsh had a few words of advice for those who might be worried about not earning enough points to get seats.
“There are several options all around rather than just the student ticketing system,” Walsh said. “New students need to look at all their options, and I hope that they will trust that they will eventually get a ticket. The Student Wolfpack Club is a serious possibility for them to earn a good ticket if they can’t get tickets through the lottery process.”
The SGAC decided to completely do away with the group policy. Students will now only be able to sign up for tickets individually and will earn tickets according to their standing rather than the highest amount of loyalty points in the given group.
“We had a bit of a problem with the group policy,” Walsh said. “At first it seemed like a good problem to have with a lot higher ticket requests. But what we realized was that seniors, loyal senior students, were missing out on going to games because one loyal fan was a group leader over a lot of freshmen and sophomores.
“So, we saw it in the best interests of the students to review it and we felt that eliminating the group policy and moving toward something more individually-based would be best.”
While Walsh saw the group policy as a problem, Jay Linderman, a Bible study leader for the large organization Campus Crusade for Christ, does not view the elimination of the group policy as a move in the right direction.
“I think that really hurts us as a ministry,” Linderman said, “because the group ticketing process was a way for us to get to know each other. We do large tailgates and charge $2 a plate and it attracts more students to our organization.”
The no-show policy was also amongst the changes to be implemented next season. In the past, students who did not show up to a game before halftime were simply deducted a loyalty point.
With the new policy, if a student misses more than two games during the football season or more than three during the basketball season in which he or she received a ticket, he or she will lose their eligibility to sign up for future games during that season.
“If we are doing as much as we can to benefit seniors to get tickets and they don’t show up to games, the system will correct itself through the no-show policy,” Walsh said. “If a student accrues a certain amount of no-shows, it will deduct points from them and greatly benefit an underclassman who may be showing up to games early and earning loyalty points.”
A new cumulative policy was also implemented, stating that students who have five career no-shows to football games or eight career no-shows to men’s basketball games will be permanently banned from signing up for tickets for that given sport.
“If you’re consistently asking for tickets and not showing up, we didn’t feel that was fair to the rest of the student body who are still below you,” Walsh said. “That’s why we implemented the new system. We want people in the stands and cheering for our student-athletes, not people who are taking tickets away from other students and not showing up to the games.”
In addition to these changes, student tickets at the RBC Center will be general admission rather than being assigned a specific section. If students enter with one another, they will be able to sit with each other.
