Ticket Tangle

On Thursday afternoon, little signs went up all over the College proclaiming that "to simplify office procedure". The application dates for football tickets have been advanced a week. This means that undergraduates who want to get anything approaching a decent seat are forced to file their applications on Monday two weeks before a game.

To criticize the Athletic Department's one-week-old distribution system may seem a little like carping, especially since we haven't forgotten the ceaseless waiting in endless lines that took so much time in past years. Besides eliminating this dreary business, the new plan also saves the H.A.A. the amount of time it took to hear the myriad requests from each person. The process of putting all the applications from one class together, mixing them up, and assigning seats at random is eminently fair and more efficient as well.

But the fact remains that the undergraduate is forced to make the decision whether or not to attend a given game two weeks ahead of time. And since he will probably bring a date, his decision amounts to whether or not he should hand over a not inconsiderable sum of money. If he should wait until the week before the game, until a time when he can be reasonably sure he will attend, the price of his prudence will more than likely be a seat in the end zone, purchased through the usual chanels of general admission.

It seems impossible to us that if the Athletic Department receives its applications the Monday before the game--or at most on Thursday or Friday of the week before--it would not be able to fill them in time enough to accommodate the last-minute surge from graduate students and the general public. It may be a sign of our rather harried times, but too many people simply don't know what they will be doing two weeks hence.