The Athletic Council voted last night to approve a proposal for how football tickets should be allocated after the university switches to semesters in 2012. But it wasn’t the proposal recommended by the chair of the Finance and Facilities subcommittee at the April meeting and that was expected to be voted on last night.

Instead, after several parliamentary maneuvers, including votes to substitute the proposal with a plan originally supported by the students representatives, the full council voted to accept an amended compromise plan proposed by the alumni representatives.

Some members of the council seemed surprised that there was more than one proposal to vote for. Terry Miller, a faculty member said he thought that there would only be one proposal, the one recommended by Karen Mancl, the chair of the subcommittee. Instead there were four.

The alumni proposal was proposed at the last subcommittee meeting on Monday, Holly Cush, one of the alumni representatives said. She said it was a way to increase alumni representation without pitting one group against another.

The alumni proposal, which was amended on the spot by alumni member Bob Weiler, would increase the number of tickets for students at the early non-conference games, from about 13,000 to about 15,500. But the proposal would slightly reduce the number of student tickets for the Big Ten games: from 30,000 to about 28,000.

Though the change may seem small, one of the students’ main goals was maintaining 30,000 seats at Big Ten games. Danelle Wilbraham, a student member on the council, said it was “a give and take,”
because students had advocated for both more early non-conference games and maintaining Big Ten student ticket numbers.

None of the four plans provided to the council and discussed at the meeting would have changed the bottom line allocation numbers for any of the groups. Also, none of the plans would have reduced revenue, according to Athletic Department officals at the meeting.

The plan that was originally supported by students on the council failed to gain enough votes to be considered by the full Council.
In the end, the vote was 13-0 with faculty member T.K. Daniel abstaining.

Peter Koltak, one of the student members on the council, originally voted against debating the alumni plan because he said he was confused by it. Before the final vote, though, Koltak indicated he would vote for it, and he thanked the alumni members for pushing what he called a “compromise” plan.

Wilbraham said the alumni plan would mostly benefit alumni by spreading their tickets out over the season, which are currently concentrated in early non-conference games. But in doing so, she said, the plan was not unfair to either students or faculty and staff.

“If that’s what it takes, personally I felt like (voting for it) was a reasonable position to take,” she said.

Much of the preliminary discussion was contentious.

T.K. Daniel, a faculty member of the council said the question of attendance at football games needed to be addressed. He said numbers showed that students had lower attendance rates than both alumni and faculty and staff.

Wilbraham, a student member, said there was little hard data on attendance.

“We just know that the ticket was scanned by not by whom,” she said. She explained that student tickets could remain unused because often it’s harder to re-sell a single ticket, rather than a pair, if a student can’t use it.

Daniel also claimed that not all of the plans were mindful of increasing the Athletic Department’s revenue, which could lead to future financial problems.

But the chair of the Athletic Council, Sharon West, disputed that.

“If we had proposed something that was going to create a financial disaster for the Athletic Department, I think we would have heard,” from the department, she said.

“So to raise the notion that we should be increasing revenue from this allocation plan is disingenuous,” she added.