Walking to work last week, I passed the long line of drowsy students waiting to buy football tickets. Curious, I asked the guy in position 900 or so how long he had been there. Since 4 a.m. was the answer. Oddly enough, I had been up since 4 a.m. also, but due to a restless infant, not to a policy concocted by adults.
I’m as big a sports fan as the next guy or gal, but there seems to be a direct clash between sports and studies when students are forced to miss a night’s sleep and probably a good chunk of their Monday classes just to support the Ducks.
Can’t the University, in all it’s wisdom, come up with a better solution, such as a weekly ticket lottery? Any computer-science undergrad could write the code for such a system, even one that weights individual odds to make it more likely for past losers to win later.
Back when I was a student here, we went to Mac Court to stand in long lines to register for classes and short lines to buy football tickets. Computers have automated the former process, and could easily handle the latter. Since the rest of us can buy tickets online (and judging by the recent Xbox episode), the athletic department is surely hip to the hi-tech scene.
Granted, the current system rewards the die-hard fans (with good camping gear) for their perseverance, as maybe it should be in the jock world. But honestly, should a few thousand students be missing or sleeping through half of their Monday classes when fair and more humane solutions exist?
Given that students pay for tickets through activity fees, distributing them in this manner is akin to assembling your employees on pay day, tossing their wages on the floor, and having them scuffle over the coins.
Show some respect for those who bring you the Autzen effect.
Keith Downing
Eugene