To the Editor:

On Wednesday, March 1, the Ohio Union Activities Board hosted Kurt Vonnegut, legendary author, in the Ohio Union Ballrooms.

The audience in attendance thoroughly enjoyed his presentation, and Mr. Vonnegut had nothing but praise for OUAB and his time here. As he announced in his speech, Ohio State was the site of his first college lecture many years ago, and Wednesday night was his last college lecture.

Unfortunately, because of space constraints and the OUAB ticketing policy in use that evening, numerous students were not able to attend.

Our ticket policy is that, for nonticketed events such as this one, every student with a valid BuckID is admitted and may bring one guest, who does not have to be an OSU student.

The Ohio Union Activities Board is truly apologetic, as it was our hope that anyone who wanted to hear Mr. Vonnegut speak would have had the opportunity to do so.

One of the greatest challenges in planning events like this is predicting the interest level and turnout. As easy as it is to conclude after the event that tickets should have been issued or a larger venue should have been secured, when planning the event, we must use the best information we have available.

We had researched the response Mr. Vonnegut has received on other campuses, and felt the venue and the admission policy we used would be appropriate. OSU’s response was truly incredible.

In hindsight, we see that we greatly underestimated the interest.

We regret that some students and devoted fans of Mr. Vonnegut were unable to see his live performance, but we are hopeful that students unable to get a seat will take the opportunity to view a recording of the performance.

We will be showing the recorded presentation of his lecture on the following dates and times in the Ohio Union Conference Theater. All students, faculty and staff members are welcome to attend.

Monday, March 6 @ 12 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.

Tuesday, March 7 @ 7:30 p.m.

Thursday, March 9 @ 12 p.m. and 5:30 p.m.

OUAB is committed to providing quality educational and entertaining programs to the OSU community, and we are extremely proud of the Lectures committee and volunteers for a fantastic event Wednesday evening.

Once again, we apologize for any inconvenience anyone might have encountered.

Domonic Rollins, OUAB PresidentJacob McKim, OUAB Lectures Chair