There’s a sense of excitement around football games that is rarely matched by other event on campus. Students paint their faces and wait hours on end at the gates so they can get the best seats available at the bottom of the student section. It’s an experience that many would describe as an adrenaline rush, and the exultation of being in the student section for a big game is unforgettable.
 
But what of the process of actually getting a ticket so you can go to the game on Saturday? Lately, most students have described the ordeal as “frustrating” and “irritating,” since many haven’t been able to get a ticket. They’ll log in 15 minutes before 6 p.m. on Sunday, when online ticket distribution begins, but when the time comes they’re given a “please wait” message and aren’t allowed into the system until as late as 6:10 p.m., by which time all the tickets are gone and they log off feeling let down.
 
“I logged on at about 5:50 p.m. and got the please wait message,” University senior Kinsley Suer said. “It finally let me through at about 6:15 pm, but when I tried to reserve a ticket it said that all of the senior tickets had sold out.”
 
It’s a familiar story for those who requested a ticket on the goducks.com website. The University changed from the student ticket distribution method from in-person to online last year because of professor and student complaints that students were missing classes on distribution days. But the change in distribution method, it hasn’t eliminated the complaints.
Just ask University senior Emily Vigoda, who was kicked off the server after getting to the confirmation screen of check-out on Sunday.
 
She thinks it was a good idea originally to move distribution online because she liked not having to stand in line, however, she thinks there has to be a way to improve how the system is now.
 
“Standing in line is a long process, but doing it online has become just as tough,” Vigoda said. “There are some people who get it easily every week, then others who have problems.”
 
The system is set up to let only a certain amount of people in at a time to clear up traffic, so if you get the “please wait” sign, don’t take it as the server being overloaded, it’s just the system creating a queue. And whatever you do, ticket office employee Alec Nelson said, don’t hit the refresh button.
 
“If you login in before 6 p.m. your screen refreshes automatically every 60 seconds,” he said. “If you press refresh, it will restart the time.”
 
That means when you get on the network, you’re put into a “line” in the order you signed in. The 60-second auto-refresh helps keep those people at the front and when there’s an opening you will be placed in it. When you press refresh on your own you essentially move yourself to the back of the line and you have to start the process all over again.
 
Nelson said the UO Ticket Office has received many calls the last two weeks from students complaining that the server had crashed, but it never actually did. The problem lies in a student’s computer dropping the connection or students refreshing the page too often or logging on late, he said.
 
“The servers absolutely didn’t crash,” said Duck Athletic Fund director Garrett Klassy.
Klassy says the new system has been great because it has generated a lot of interest in the team and because it’s the most fair.
 
“We have over 50,000 people on at one time when our single-game tickets go on sale in July,” he said. “It’s just that there is such a high demand for student tickets and not that many available that causes the frustration.”
 
The kinks so far have led some students to believe that there should be a fix.
 
Senior Ben Rieder, who got a ticket for the Washington State game, suggests that the University create an open discussion with students to brainstorm new ideas for more efficient ticket distribution.
 
“If I was the U of O, I would be like, hey I have 20,000 students and at least one of them has to have a good idea, so they need to open up the discussion,” Rieder said. “They could start a Web site where people upload ideas for problems like this and the student body could vote on the ones they like. There should be some kind of say from the students because they are the ones that have to fight for the tickets.”


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