Over the past few days, there have been multiple articles and editorials in the Emerald regarding student tickets, incidental fees and the Pac-12 Championship Game. With these articles and letters also comes a bevy of incorrect information, which I am here to clear up.@@Ooo! Please do!@@ I’ve done my research on the matter, and the claims made by ASUO President Ben Eckstein, the Emerald opinion staff and student letters to the editor are wrong.@@Yes, ALL of them (implied sarcasm)@@ Yes, the ticketing system is “broken.” But ask the ASUO, who runs the system. It may be through the athletic department website, but it is the ASUO’s system. Before you all grab your torch and pitchfork and head for the Casanova Center, ask the ASUO why they haven’t done their part to fix an online ticketing system they developed.
Why doesn’t the athletic department open up another section of student seats? ASUO sold back section nine because students didn’t sell out their allotment. If we are paying more in incidental fees, we should get more football tickets, right? Wrong. Is football the only sport offered at the University? Those incidental fees are the same that allow you to get tickets for men’s basketball games AND to get into volleyball, women’s basketball, baseball, softball and track and field events for free. (All you do is show your ID and you’re in.)
Why are we paying for the Pac-12 Championship Game if we already paid for student season tickets? Because it is not an Oregon home game.@@what?@@ The walls of Autzen Stadium will not read “Oregon Ducks,” and Don Essig@@http://blog.oregonlive.com/ducks/2010/10/don_essig_with_the_line_of_the.html@@ will not claim that it never rains. The Pac-12 will run the game as if it were a bowl game. UCLA doesn’t control the Rose Bowl game, even if (by some force of nature) it happened to be a division representative in the game. Its AD is actually giving students a discount on highly sought-after tickets in a prime location.
In politics, if a problem is left over by a previous administration, the current president doesn’t just say “I didn’t do that. Not my problem.” They fix it. The opinion staff of the Emerald stated “We’re going toward taking back power and respect from a body that owes us.” So, let’s either take ticketing out of the hands of the ASUO or make them think of a new system. They owe it to us.

Alex Horwitch@@http://directory.uoregon.edu/telecom/directory.jsp?p=findpeople%2Ffind_results&m=student&d=person&b=name&s=Alex+Horwitch@@
Pit Crew president