On the Monday prior to the last football game of the season — a monumental game that determined which team in a 115-year-old rivalry would go to the Rose Bowl — 281 students thought they were shoo-ins to get tickets because they’d attended every home game.
But that was not the case.
Attending all six home games played no factor into whether students were able to get a ticket to last Thursday’s Civil War game, as the ASUO had previously indicated. ASUO’s priority policy that would have allowed those who attended all home games prior to the game the ability “to request Civil War tickets in advance of the normal student ticketing distribution” was not implemented.
ASUO President Emma Kallaway, Athletics and Contracts Finance Committee Chair Alex McCafferty and ACFC Vice Chair Ben Eckstein made the decision not to give these students priority.
Senior Alexandria Warnke-Crary, one of the 281 students who attended every home game, said the promised priority was one of her reasons for going to every game. “These are the students who devoted their Saturdays to each game, who drove up before school even started and who were at every home game supporting their team,” she said. 
Warnke-Crary was able to attend the Civil War game because a friend bought her a standing room ticket, yet she was frustrated that she was not joined by her sister, who had gone to all of the other home games with her.
“I’m still kind of upset about it,” she said. “It was a really good game and I’m really glad I was there, but it’s still kind of a bummer that other people whom I like to experience the game with, weren’t there.”
McCafferty said that the reasoning behind the change came from the many problems reported throughout the year.
“Because there were so many students that were experiencing server problems and issues with software on their computers, we thought it would be more fair to remove the rewards system than to put it in place,” McCafferty said. “We wouldn’t be rewarding die-hard fans, we would be rewarding students with really good Internet connection or who were lucky — that was not the intention of the reward system.”
The priority system, McCafferty said, had been advertised by the athletic department — but because it was never formally written into the contract, the decision was left up to the ASUO as to whether to honor the reward system.
“The priority plan was never something that the ASUO fully supported and was not written into contract,” Kallaway said. “Because of that, we didn’t feel that it was advertised well enough. More importantly with the glitches in system, it’s not that (students) could just try harder, it was really that you had to get a little bit lucky (to get a ticket).”
The group expressed understanding for the students who did not get what they were promised.
“I sympathize with them; many students made an effort to attend every game,” McCafferty said. “But their ability to attend was based on external factors.”
Dean of Students Paul Shang heard many complaints from students and inquired about the situation at last week’s Senate meeting.
“Several students had raised the issue expressing how disappointed they felt,” Shang said. “Regardless if there was a miscommunication or not, we have to keep in mind that all anyone was trying to do was come up with a system that was fair.”
Shang also said he hoped the lessons of this year’s distribution system will reflect in next
year’s system.
“I know that this is all weighing heavily in (ASUO members’) minds, especially in further discussion on ways to allocate tickets giving everyone an opportunity — to help students participate in events on campus.”
Although Warnke-Crary is a senior, she still wants to see changes to the distribution system.
“The ASUO and the ticketing office need to get together and get a system that works,” she said. “Find a policy and stick to it the entire season, don’t change it a week before the game — that way other people next year won’t have to go through the frustration I went through.”
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