The football team will play Virginia Tech this Saturday at 3:30 p.m. and many students aren’t happy about it for one simple reason–they won’t be there.
The team is in a position to gain even more national attention as N.C. State is in the AP top-25 for the first time since 2003. But that fact along with the coincidence of Parents and Families Weekend has surged requests for student tickets to well more than the number of tickets available.
According to chair of Student Government’s Commission on Athletics Jeffery Johnson, a senior in business administration, more than 16,000 students requested tickets for 8,000 seats.
But in addition to the volume of requests, students were allowed to request for up to two guests tickets and according to Johnson, approximately 1,000 were awarded. This means that although 16,000 students want to sit in the student section at the game, only about 7,000 secured that opportunity after the first lottery.
“Obviously everyone is upset about ticketing,” Andy Walsh, a sophomore in political science, said during Student Government’s Campus Community Committee meeting Tuesday. “It’s a very weird system.”
But guest tickets are not a new feature for Parents and Families Weekend.
“We always give out guest tickets for [the Parents and Families Weekend] games,” Walsh said. “[Johnson] told me they had 4,000 guest ticket requests. 20,000 ticket requests. So that’s a whole lot of people that are going to get left out.”
However, athletics is aware of the high demand and will be giving out extra tickets tomorrow at 4:30 p.m. according to Walsh.
“Athletics understood because this game is very big, that they were going to help us all out and close down selling tickets that got returned and there’s 1,500 tickets that will be given out to students [Wednesday],” Walsh said. “Guest tickets can be purchased from those, too. Every student that goes up can get two guest tickets.”
Despite the good faith gesture by the Athletics Department, Walsh is not totally satisfied with the decision.
“I don’t think that the extra tickets they got for students should go back to being guest available,” Walsh said. “If we have 1,500 more tickets and we have 8,000 students who didn’t get tickets, I think those should all be open for students.”
But beyond this weekend’s game thoughts of how to change the student ticketing system are being thrown around, but because of the risk of the system crashing, chances for a change seem slim.
“We need to find a way, if this happens in the future, to better the system for students to be able to get tickets,” Walsh said. “There are things that need to be switched with the system. The problem is with the student ticketing automation system that we use, if we make any changes… if we try to change the coding, it could crash the system.”
The earliest the ticketing system could be changed would be next year, according to junior in economics Chandler Thompson.
“There’s not much we can do for this year except limit guest tickets,” Thompson said. “My suggestion would be to look into ticketing options, knowing that you’re looking forward to next year.”
And the change to guest tickets has been made for the Boston College game according to Walsh.
“I know that the Boston College game, [Athletics has] already limited guest tickets to one,” Walsh said. “They dropped it [from 10] because of what happened this week. They are aware.”
Senior in biological sciences Sam Dennis expressed his concern that another problem with the current system is that students don’t understand the ticketing system.
“What I as a student am most frustrated with is I feel there is no transparency between athletics and what’s going on,” Dennis said. “A lot of the student body is very upset and it comes from them not being educated on the process and not being consulted.”
The current online ticketing system was implemented in 2004, and has not dealt with N.C. State receiving national recognition and the subsequent rise in ticketing demand. But for any change to occur, Thompson said students need to be involved in the process.
“Students are passionate about their tickets here,” Walsh said. “Football games and basketball games are some of the events that really bring the campus together. This is something students should have a complete say in. In a way they pay for these football tickets. They give a lot of money to athletics to every single year.”
But the unrest caused by students not getting tickets does serve to increase awareness of student ticketing and gives Student Government something to work with according to Walsh.
“This isn’t something that shouldn’t be taken lightly especially because you can see how emotional people get when they don’t get a football ticket,” Walsh said. “If people are complaining, we have something to work with.”