A Free-Market Defense of Letting Harvard-Yale Be

In past weeks, some Harvard administrators have admonished the many students who have taken to house email lists in order to sell their tickets to the Harvard-Yale football game. Selling student tickets has always been prohibited by the University, but in years past the rule has not been strictly enforced. This year, likely due to the increased number of students in the market, at least one House administrator has gone as far as threatening referral to the Office of Academic Integrity and Student Conduct for the practice.

Official rules aside, we believe that the administration should continue the leniency it has shown in past years. Not only are students exercising a right to sell their tickets in a free market and therein expressing a well-founded frustration at the relocation of The Game to Fenway Park, but the threat of administrative discipline is out of proportion with the nature of the infraction.

As we have previously stated, the University has changed The Game for the worse in many ways. It became far more difficult to obtain a ticket near one’s friends due to the requirement that, in order to do so, one had to go with all of one’s friends to get tickets at the same time. There are also only two locations for Harvard students to pick up tickets — one of which is across the river. The Game has been entirely drained of its social joy. Many Harvard students, as a result, will likely choose not to go to Fenway.

In short, it is the University’s own fault that The Game is less enticing to attend, and that students are consequently selling their tickets. The University should thus not punish students for selling tickets to a game that has been ruined for students by the University itself. Indeed, if Harvard students want to sell their tickets and other people (likely other students and their relatives) want to buy those tickets, the University should let them go about that interaction without the threat of disciplinary action.

Furthermore, the punishment of referring students to the Office of Academic Integrity and Student Conduct for selling their tickets to The Game is disproportionate to the infraction committed. Selling a ticket to a school football game does not a merit a formal referral to the Office of Academic Integrity and Student Conduct.

Indeed, if the University had kept The Game the way it was before, the number of students selling their tickets would be far smaller. University administration should not be surprised that students are selling their tickets and complain when it caused the problem in the first place.

Instead, the University should let the market regulate itself.

This staff editorial is the product of discussions at regular Editorial Board meetings. In order to ensure the impartiality of our journalism, Crimson editors who choose to opine and vote at these meetings are not involved in the reporting of articles on similar topics.