SC improves stance on student tickets

by DC Trojan on Nov 13, 2006 9:54 PM PST in News Comment 2 comments

Apologies if this has been covered already and I missed it, but I was struck that the SC Alumni magazine which arrived at my house yesterday had an announcement front and center about rectifying the nonsenses over limiting student tickets and poor crowd control earlier in the season -- for which the university had been rightly criticized here and elsewhere...

Anyway, the press release from the VP of Student Affairs includes the following highlights:

President Steven B. Sample has directed me and other senior officers of USC to develop a plan in consultation with student leaders that will guarantee that all undergraduate students at USC - all 16,400 - have the opportunity to purchase reserved football tickets for the 2007 season at a deep discount before tickets are made available to the general public.

Further on, the mea culpa:

On behalf of the university, I apologize to all students who were turned away from the Nebraska game or who encountered problems getting into the Coliseum. We did not plan well; we did not communicate well; we did not seek student advice to the degree that we needed to. But we have learned some important lessons that will be put to good use in the immediate future. The university has been rightly criticized for its actions and is addressing the grievances and concerns expressed by students, alumni and parents.

Quite right too. The only thing that puzzled me was this:

This [new ticket sales] plan includes a change from general admission seating to reserve seating. We are looking at several options to address the desire of students to sit with their friends.

I seem to remember that back in the days of yore when the La Brea Tar Pits was the after-hours snack bar, we traded blocks of coupons for seats by virtue of sending the aerospace engineers out to hit the ticket office early... how long has it been general admission? How old am I?

The text of the press release in its entirety can be found here.

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seating

it's been general admission for all 4 years i've been here, including this one. that is what generally causes the aforementioned chaos.

by kishii on Nov 13, 2006 11:39 PM PST reply actions 0 recs

well now I know...

That seems like a bass-ackwards way of doing things. Considering that they were only just phasing in registering for classes by phone when I was a freshman and could manage designated seats then, the general admission approach seems a poor show.

by DC Trojan on Nov 14, 2006 8:41 AM PST up reply actions 0 recs