New H-Y Game Policy to Assign Seats by Year

The athletic department’s ticket office and the Undergraduate Council released earlier this week its new ticket distribution policy for the Harvard-Yale Game—one that will force students to get tickets almost a month before the opening kickoff.

The changes come as a result of the previously announced decision to allow all undergraduates to attend the Game for free—which the ticket office expects to create a large rush for tickets.

“I would imagine with the success of the team the past two seasons, and with it being Harvard-Yale, and with it being a free ticket, we’re anticipating a pretty strong showing [for tickets],” said Athletics Department Ticket Manager Mike Correa.

Despite the free tickets for undergraduates, guests will have to pay more to get through the gates than the last time the Bulldogs visited Harvard Stadium.

While in 2000 undergraduates could officially bring one guest at $12 and additional guests at $25, all guest tickets will be $29 this year.

The distribution of free tickets, which will be organized by class year, will begin Monday and will conclude Nov. 1. All tickets will be distributed at the Athletics Ticket Office in Allston. In past years, tickets had also been available at the Harvard Box Office in the Holyoke Center.

Students must go to the ticket office on their class’ allotted days with the IDs of all the students with whom they intend to sit.

“To control the expected desire for tickets, we set up this [class year-based] system so that we could control the number of people coming to the ticket office,” said council member Matthew J. Glazer ’06.

Additionally, each class has tentatively been assigned a section of the football stadium, although if there are too many students from a given class to fit in one section, that class may overflow into the next section.

The emphasis on class seating represents a shift in policy from previous years.

“This system is really encouraging grades to sit with each other [in their grade],” Glazer said.

Some students, however, said they worried the class seating system might be an unwelcome restraint.

“I felt like a lot of people might want to sit with their House and things like that,” said Rohit Chopra ’04, chair of the council’s Student Affairs Committee.

While the athletics department has indicated that it plans to enforce seating more strictly, most students were unfazed by the change, pointing out that they can still sit wherever they please.

“I anticipate that seating enforcement won’t be so strict that I won’t be able to walk in and sit with all my friends,” said Adam J. Cohon ’03, co-chair of the Adams House Committee.

Several students noted that Houses generally don’t even sit together, so the new regulations shouldn’t pose a problem.

“Pretty much everyone just goes to the Game and sits with their friends, who are mostly in their own class,” said Emerson G. Farrell ’03, co-chair of the Mather House Council.

Chopra conceded that the ticket distribution system—which he helped to develop—won’t be perfect.

“They wanted to make it logistically easy, get the most students out there, and make it so they’ll all be able to sit with their friends,” he said. “This is the first time that this is free, so it’s kind of an experiment.”

Seniors can pick up tickets on Oct. 21-23, juniors on Oct. 24, 25 and 28, sophomores on Oct. 29 and 30 and first-years on Oct. 31 and Nov. 1.

Students who miss their assigned pickup days may go to the ticket office at any later date. Free undergraduate tickets are guaranteed through Nov. 1, but seating in class section is not guaranteed for late pickups.