To the Editor:
I sat in line for 45 minutes Tuesday afternoon to get a ticket to see Julie Bowen speak Wednesday night. When I arrived at 11:15 a.m., there was already a long, snaky line covering the floor of the Kasper Multipurpose Room. I took a spot on the floor next to a student who told me that he was the end of the line. As noon approached more and more people flooded into the ever-shrinking space. Many people who entered did not appear to search for the end of the line but simply stood in different spots all around the room.
When the Lecture Board representatives came in, they asked everyone to stay seated. As if on cue, everyone instead stood up. Then they started passing out tickets. After about two minutes I realized that the line I was in was actually just a long snaky circle in the middle of the room. At a certain point the lines disintegrated entirely and instead a single stream of students, roughly six feet wide, formed along one side of the room. There was much protesting and pushing where I was standing as people suddenly realized that sitting in line for two hours made less difference than where you were seated in the room relative to where the ticket dispensers were standing.
As I stood in this anxious stream, I saw several students passing their ID cards forward to friends standing closer to the front. Other people blatantly cut forward in the line. Ultimately I and many others who had waited longer left empty-handed. Meanwhile more opportunistic souls, who either arrived later or simply handed off their IDs to others, snatched a ticket. As those of us who did not receive a ticket filed out, several people stopped in front of the two ticket-dispensers to lodge their complaints. I overheard one of the ticket dispensers saying, "I'm sorry, we put up signs," as an explanation, presumably, for how the Lecture Board had tried to avoid this mess. I wasn't sure what that meant.
I understand that handing out tickets for an event is not as straightforward a process as it might seem. But the Lecture Board ought to spend more time planning a system of ticket distribution that is actually fair and equitable.
If people are going to be asked to stand in line, some for several hours, to get tickets for an event, then the rule ought to be that the person at the front of the line can only get one ticket using the ID card with his or her picture on it. Allowing people who have avoided the line entirely to get tickets before those who have waited for hours seems tacitly unfair. The Lecture Board also needs to spend more time thinking about how to maintain line integrity. Today's ticket dispensation favored those who were opportunistic and pushy and disenfranchised lots of people who had followed the rules.
Elisha Anderson '98
Associate Director of Admission
