The state of your student tickets is still in flux.
Andrew Lubash, ASUO senator and chair of the Athletics and Contracts Finance Committee, decided to call a greater support base for the committee’s ongoing struggle with athletic department over student ticket allotment – the student body itself.
On April 14, Lubash began a petition that offers signers the chance to protest 300 student tickets being cut from the lottery system if the athletic department doesn’t get the funding increase it has requested from the ASUO this year. The petition contains a letter signed by 13 senators and three other ACFC members and has garnered several hundred signatures in its first few days.
“Students are tired of being treated like a piggy bank. Tuition is increasing and we are already struggling as it is,” Lubash said.
The athletic department negotiates its agreement with the ACFC every year to provide student tickets to football and men’s basketball games, which are provided via a lottery system on goducks.com. In the fall, the athletics department requested a 10 percent increase in its benchmark. That request was lowered to 3 percent during winter term, but the ACFC failed to pass a recommendation in both its second and third budget hearings because it was so divided over whether any increase at all would be appropriate. The recommendation ACFC presented to Senate was therefore $o by default.
Senate then passed a zero percent increase overall in its final budget meeting in February. Since then, the ACFC has been communicating with the athletics department to work out a contract. Finance and Administration director Eric, Roedl, had suggested at the budget hearings for athletics to consider the possibility of cutting student tickets if it does not receive the 3 percent increase it requested. Those tickets that would be cut from the lottery would then be sold back to the students as 300 season ticket packages, available for individual purchase.
Both the ACFC and the athletics department have expressed their aversion to cutting student tickets from the lottery in budget hearings and statements.
“The passionate support provided by students at our over 100 home athletic events is vital to the incredible success of our programs,” Craig Pintens, director of marketing and public relations wrote in an email.
Lubash met with Vice President for Student Life Robin Holmes on April 17 to discuss mediation between the ACFC and athletic department.
Follow Kaylee Tornay on Twitter @ka_tornay