Watson: Scalpers May Be Punished

Dean Watson warned yesterday that students selling Yale tickets for more than the established price of six dollars are subject to prosecution under Massachusetts law and discipline under College regulations. Football players selling their tickets could be ruled ineligible for intercollegiate competition, he said.

Prices received for tickets continued to rise. A member of the Harvard football team said that teammates had sold one block of four tickets for $320. Several Final Clubs acting as clearing-houses in the transactions are offering sellers as much as $50 each for senior tickets. Students who placed an advertisement in the CRIMSON offering tickets for sale received $60 for a pair of tickets on the ten-yard line.

"The average student wouldn't realize it is wrong to sell tickets at these prices," Watson said. Varsity and freshmen football coaches contacted their players yesterday to warn them against the sales, he said. A ticket-sale scandal in the 1930's cost several football players their eligibility at Harvard, he added.

Members of the varsity team were given two free tickets with an option to buy two more, and lettermen were given two additional free tickets. All members of the team could order an unlimited number of additional tickets, although not all those requests were filled.

Temptation

Football players denied yesterday that anyone had ordered the additional tickets with the intention of scalping them. "When we ordered them a few weeks ago no one even knew that this game would be so crucial, and tickets so much in demand," one player said. But some team members have apparently been unable to resist the astronomical prices currently being offered, he added.

An official in charge of Broadway show and other tickets at the Harvard Club of New York said yesterday that he had received many calls from Harvard and Yale students asking from $25 to $150 per ticket, but few sales were made. "The alumni are rather disgusted about the whole thing. Some of them ordered tickets in August and haven't been refunded their checks," he said. Hundreds of alumni will watch the game over closed-circuit TV in the New York Harvard Club. The official speculated that the tickets being offered in New York came from the team, since they are mostly near the 50-yard line.

A spokesman for the Athletic Office said yesterday that plainclothes police will circulate among the crowd outside the Stadium Saturday. But Watson said the Administration does not intend "to try to find criminals. Heavens no, we aren't out to scalp people," he said.