I am probably one of the most avid football fans you will ever meet. I have not missed the Tigers run down the hill in the 3 football seasons that I have been a Clemson student so far and do not plan to break that streak this year, my senior year. I have never left early and watch every play of the game until the end (even when we beat SC State 73-7 last year), but Clemson seems to have other plans for me this year. In what is expected to be the team’s best season in recent history, the university decided that switching to an online ticketing policy was the best choice. Nothing relying on Clemson’s technology is a good choice. Eduroam crashes at least twice a day and this past week has been exceptionally bad. The projector in my first class this morning would not turn on. Blackboard is down or under maintenance constantly and do not even get me started on Iroar during registration. For such an incredible university that is so strong in engineering and science you would hope we would be able to manage online ticketing for sports as so many other schools have done, but sadly that is not the case.
As a senior, Monday at noon was my scheduled time to be able to log on to reserve my ticket for the first game of the season, Wofford. I was at work in the athletic department when this time rolled around. I opened the link on my computer and tried to register. My first attempt told me that I was not a Clemson student and could not perform this action. My parents would certainly disagree with the Internet as they just paid this months chunk of my $40,000 a year out-of-state tuition the other day. I tried again thinking surely this was a mistake, I have 120 credits how could I not be a student. My second attempt directed me to the IPTAY donation page. Everyone in the office thought this was hysterical as I continued to get more and more frustrated. I see you and your not so subtle plug IPTAY. 2 people in the athletic department office couldn’t figure out what to do any better than I could, so I decided to take a walk down to the ticketing office. There was already a nice long line of seniors there experiencing similar problems. Some were even being told they were Freshmen and Sophomores. By this time my hopes of a lower deck ticket were long gone and I just wanted to be able to get in the game. Once I finally made it to the front, the guy working was extremely helpful and got me an upper deck ticket and fixed my problem. But remember, this is only Wofford.
What will games like Notre Dame and Florida State be like? The Eduroam server will probably explode. The site will crash and then what? How do they ensure that the ranking order of getting tickets remains intact? I can only imagine the riots that will ensue.
Why take away the tradition of camping out and waiting in line for tickets with your friends? Yes people spent days and days waiting out in all kinds of weather, but it was an experience people will never forget. There was usually enough people per tent that people weren’t missing class to stand there. Some people may have had morning classes that they would choose to miss to stand in line the day of their distribution. But if I have to go to the ticket office because the website failed anyway, what is the difference? Some of the stress on the system could have been taken off if the size of the blocks had not been reduced to nothing. Sororities with over 200 members have had the blocks reduced to not even enough for the whole senior class. Nothing about this new system makes sense besides the university being able to say that we are advancing to an “up to date” distribution system. We don’t even get a physical ticket anymore (and I’m bitter because I had a craft planned for all the stubs from all 4 years).
Clemson is all about tradition, with football and all the fanfare surrounding it being one of the grandest traditions of them all. Yes the money comes from the donors and people who are actually purchasing the tickets, but it is OUR university and students should come first. The system should have been tested out for other sports tickets or any way to keep the mass amount of problems that have occurred in the past 2 days and that will continue for the rest of the week to a minimum. Can’t wait to spend the first game of the season with no one I know all the way in the upper deck