After years of grumbles from students, Ohio State finally decided to toss out the punch-style football tickets for students. There were complaints the tickets couldn’t be passed along to friends when the owner couldn’t attend the game and didn’t want the ticket to go to waste.
So instead, OSU implemented a new system that will scan tickets as the student holders walk through one of four designated gates. Representatives from the athletic department said the number of gates and the number of scanners will be increased at tomorrow’s homecoming game, but the move comes a little too late.
At the Northwestern game, many students were stuck in lines outside the gates, waiting for the folks doing the scanning to move people through. Many even missed the first quarter of the game because they couldn’t get into the stadium in time. Richelle Simonson, associate athletic director at OSU, said “If (students) come 10 minutes before kickoff there is a strong chance they won’t get in before kickoff.”
Isn’t the whole point of a start time to make sure fans get there by then? Why should students have to come long before game time just to get into the stadium? Many universities like to showcase their student sections, promoting their rabid fan base and the student’s loyalty to their university. With this latest move, Ohio State seems to say the students don’t matter as much as the rest of the fans, often made up of alumni and Columbus residents.
In its defense, the Athletic Department has said it is slowly implementing the scanner system and by next season, every gate should be equipped to handle the student fans. Officials sited the high costs of installing such a system right away, which is a valid point. But perhaps the university could have taken a different approach by holding the whole system back for a year to build up funds to start the system at the beginning of the year.
The scanners have the potential to be really beneficial to OSU. Because of the scanning system, the tickets can be authenticated while the ticketholder is entering the stadium. If used effectively, ticket fraud could be drastically reduced. Not only will counterfeit tickets usually come up as invalid on a scan, they may also come up stolen if the owner reported their ticket missing. While it seems like the university could use the system to benefit the OSU community, the slow approach has only caused problems. If the system goes as planned, however, the scan-based tickets will be able to help the university in the long run.
