hockey line forming

[ithacat]

I'm not jealous (I have season seats as well); I was just making a joke.

How much did you pay for C-seats?

[Jeff Hopkins '82]

In the real world there is a concept called lawsuits.  

If anyone did actually get injured, find a good lawyer and sue the Athletics Department, the University, and Gene Nighman.  If they realize that the cost of doing it wrong far exceeds the cost of doing it right, there may be some incentive to change.  

It is, after all, about the almighty greenback.

[Cisco]

[Q]Jeff Hopkins '82 Wrote:

 In the real world there is a concept called lawsuits.  ...

It is, after all, about the almighty greenback.[/q]


Umm... no actually it is not about the money.

If Cornell were a truely financially motivated group, they would simply institue price rationing. Obviously, demand far outstrips supply here - so they could merely raise prices. I wager they could fetch around 500.00 for season tickets without risking any empty seats.

Obviously, the trick here is to find a system that accomplishes their goals. Most fans want that goal to be rewarding the most faithful fans. I think Cornell Athletic's goal is more like, "make it be a fair chance for any student to get tickets." It's gotten so bad, why not just institute a lottery? Then students would be even more upset.

Also, to all those people who think that cheering will be messed up - I think you far underestimate all the non-section B fans. They are dedicated and learn cheers as well. This years cheering will not be very different from last year  - though Section B might not stand out as well.

[Trotsky]

People are also making the assumption that the aggressive line cutters are the facetimers.  It may be that they are the most dedicated student fans.

Doug Murray would have cut. :-D

The solution to this seems blindingly obvious to me.  Make the entire student area general admission.  Open the doors 4 hours before game time -- a market-driven solution, in which time is money.

[Tub(a)]

[Q]Trotsky Wrote:

 People are also making the assumption that the aggressive line cutters are the facetimers.  It may be that they are the most dedicated student fans.

Doug Murray would have cut.

The solution to this seems blindingly obvious to me.  Make the entire student area general admission.  Open the doors 4 hours before game time -- a market-driven solution, in which time is money.[/q]

But then people would have to *skip class* to get in line on Friday!!

And they would have to pay (if they are paid) ushers 4 more hours. I'm sure some of those ushers have day jobs.

I think making tickets general admission is a good idea, but not for distribution. Say that tickets are sold 8pm on Sunday and make the announcement where at 4pm on Friday. Have police monitor the line. Even if facetimers manage to get some tickets through this system, making their tickets GA and opening the doors a couple hours before gametime would put them in the least desirable student seats. Knowing that all tickets are GA would also cut down on the stampede for the initial ticket distribution.

[Trotsky]

[Q]Tub(a) Wrote:
But then people would have to *skip class* to get in line on Friday.[/q]

Exactly.  Opportunity cost.

No ushers.  Laissez faire.  It works so well in the other aspects of our republic.

[canuck26]

Though we all know that this system did not work (at the very least, they should have been given out Saturday to eliminate facetimers), we now have section Bers all over to coordinate cheers.  Last year the cheers were weak in the other sections (I was a freshman in D); however, I also look forward to teaching all the pushers in B with me how to cheer correctly.  Let's make Lynah more than just section B, and have the entire student section voice their support.

[Josh '99]

[Q]Cisco Wrote:
Obviously, the trick here is to find a system that accomplishes their goals. Most fans want that goal to be rewarding the most faithful fans. I think Cornell Athletic's goal is more like, "make it be a fair chance for any student to get tickets." It's gotten so bad, why not just institute a lottery? Then students would be even more upset. [/q]If that's what they want, they could just as easily go back to the system that was in place when I was buying student tickets, where order forms were sent to every student at some point over the summer, you mailed them back as soon as you could, and everyone got assigned a line number (which I think was good for up to two tickets).  You could group together as many line numbers as you wanted with the priority of the worst line number.  Very orderly, quite random.  (Arguably not a whole lot more random than what was described last night, much more orderly, and I'm sure nobody ever had to call EMS as a result of that process.)

[Liz '05]

[Q]Tub(a) Wrote:
 But then people would have to *skip class* to get in line on Friday!![/q]

Don't you know true Faithful don't schedule class on Fridays?  It inhibits their ability to get to away games :-P

[Rita]

The lottery was also weighted so that the longer you had been at cornell (i.e. matriculation date), the better number you got. And, I believe you could get up to four tickets. There was one year (1997-1998??, 6th or 7th year of grad school), that i had #2 and was able to get 3 tickets. Ironically, the person ahead of me wanted the *exact*  same seats i wanted... Section D, row 11 seats 1-3. (We love the band, but just didn't want that close in section B).

I know how everyone is in favor of a line - sleep out for days. But as a grad student with two dependents (a dog and a thesis project that requires being in the lab doing experiments), I would not have been able to do that.

For those of you shut out of tickets... come to the everblades tourney in december... PLENTY of good seats available.

Rita

[ninian '72]

[Q]Tub(a) Wrote:

 [Q2]Trotsky Wrote:

 The solution to this seems blindingly obvious to me.  Make the entire student area general admission.  Open the doors 4 hours before game time -- a market-driven solution, in which time is money.[/Q]
But then people would have to *skip class* to get in line on Friday!!

And they would have to pay (if they are paid) ushers 4 more hours. I'm sure some of those ushers have day jobs.

I think making tickets general admission is a good idea, but not for distribution. Say that tickets are sold 8pm on Sunday and make the announcement where at 4pm on Friday. Have police monitor the line. Even if facetimers manage to get some tickets through this system, making their tickets GA and opening the doors a couple hours before gametime would put them in the least desirable student seats. Knowing that all tickets are GA would also cut down on the stampede for the initial ticket distribution.[/q]

You'd then have a mini-version of this every weekend, with the need to monitor the line, etc.  Hopefully I'm wrong on this.

There's a lot to be angry about this year.  I suspect we can't expect athletics ever to get this right.  Fortunately no one was badly maimed or worse, which isn't unthinkable.  There's plenty of precedent for precisely that happening in these situations, most notably the Hillsborough disaster in 1989:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/april/15/newsid_2491000/2491195.stm

Take a look at the last two paragraphs in the above link:

"Some fans have said bad ticket allocation contributed to the disaster.

"Liverpool has far more supporters than Nottingham Forest but were given 6,000 fewer tickets and allocated the smaller Leppings Lane stand."

There are less fair and more fair ways to distribute tickets, but batting these ideas around ignores the fact that we're looking at a bear trying to figure out how to fit into a rabbit warren.  There's really only one long-term, satisfactory solution to this.  It's an unpopular one with a lot of the Lynah faithful, but when students are risking injury to get tickets, I think a line has been crossed that makes this the only realistic solution.

Hint:  For those of you who went to Minnesota last spring, how'd you like their rink?

[BCrespi]

Well, while I'd love to, I had time to spare, not plane and hotel fare.

[Liz '05]

[Q]ninian '72 Wrote:
Hint:  For those of you who went to Minnesota last spring, how'd you like their rink?
[/q]

I know what you're getting at, but I like Lynah better.  Besides the obvious pro-Cornell aspect of Lynah that isn't seen at Mariucci, and the fact that we probably couldn't get 10000 fans into Ithaca on that regular a basis, I like my seats above the glass and close to the ice.  It's kinda hard to do that in most modern rinks.  It took me a really long time to adjust, and even then I felt miles away from a lot of the action.  (It didn't help that the play was often on the other end of the rink.)  They had a really nice concourse, though - plenty of space to walk around and very little of the crowding you see at Lynah between periods/at the end of the game.

[mha]

[Q]jmh30 Wrote:
...I'm sure nobody ever had to call EMS as a result of that process.[/q]

Ow! Paper cut!

[ninian '72]

10K is an obvious stretch, but it would be interesting to know how many students actually showed up for the stampede.  If athletics actually passed out a number to each of the students who showed, regardless of Lynah's capacity, it would be a good way to measure the potential student fanbase/market for tickets that could then be used for some intelligent planning, for a change.