After so many student season ticket holders expressed their annoyance last fall at the change to one season pass from individually perforated tickets, the university has again altered the form of season tickets for this upcoming football season.
Many students found the previous credit-card sized season pass inconvenient as it prevented ticket holders who could not attend any of the scheduled football games from selling their tickets for face value.
One of the reasons that the athletic department issued the tickets this way was to prevent students from scalping and selling them for profit; however, they ultimately ended up making it incredibly difficult for students to sell tickets that they were within their rights to do so, and in turn, the athletic department received much criticism from students.
This year, student season football tickets will be distributed similarly to the way basketball tickets were allotted this past winter. Three days before each home game this fall, students will receive an e-mail with an attached PDF file, which will serve as their tickets. Students will print the file and use it as their means of admittance into the game.
This new system will make it easier for students to forward tickets to friends in the event that the ticket holder can't attend the scheduled game.
While this new method of ticket distribution is an improvement over last season's all-inclusive season pass, the new system does not ultimately solve the problem of students scalping tickets.
There is really no system in place to keep students from printing off multiple copies of their tickets and selling the other copies for profit. Those who are exceptionally handy might even employ the services of Photoshop to alter the tickets' barcodes.
Students who spend $40 on a season ticket might be disappointed when turned away at the stadium gates because it turns out their ticket is not valid. These are some dangers that come with allowing students to print off their own tickets for the games.
However, because students are now responsible for using their own paper and ink to print their own tickets for the football games, we're left wondering why the $15 mandatory handling fee is necessary, in addition to the $60 spent for the season tickets. The athletic department also issued a $6 handling fee for season basketball tickets last winter.
A handling fee was an understandable inconvenience in years past considering the athletic department created perforated football tickets and mailed them to us, or this past year, mailed us the plastic season pass. However, this year the athletic department is not printing any tickets, nor are they bearing the cost of postage, so an additional service fee on top of the price of tickets seems unnecessary.
If anything, students are taking a more active role than ever before in obtaining their tickets before games.
If we're going to be expected to print off season tickets using our own printer, ink and paper - servicing ourselves for the most part - we should not need to pay service fees equivalent to those in years past.
The editorial board is composed of David Grant, David Harries and Laurel Colella.