Making football fun again

Get there early to avoid losing your spot to a forgery.

Hold your breath because it's about to get a little cramped.

And heaven help you if you get a craving for a Chick-fil-a sandwich or worse -- need to relieve yourself.

Are you ready for some football?

Even though the outcome of last Saturday's game against Boston College was an amazing, fairly-tale, come-from-behind victory for the Pack, there was even more drama unfolding off the field than on it.

To start, we continue to have only two student gates in which to enter which are hidden at the back of the stadium. This causes irritation and long lines, especially when a large amount of students arrive at the stadium moments before the kickoff, only to spend more time than is necessary outside Carter-Finley, being felt up by overly-friendly event staff.

An additional grievance is the amount of student tickets available, which Athletics has not changed in 10 years. Despite the increase in stadium seating capacity and a rising undergraduate population, Athletics has denied students an increase in available tickets.

Finally, our section has become overcrowded due to forged tickets and students sneaking past event staff sentries. The problem has festered so much that students with legitimate tickets to the section are turned away. Others fear losing the spots they may or may not have obtained legitimately, and must make their buddy's popcorn bucket into a kernel urinal when nature calls.

At the meeting of the minds between Athletics and Student Government, we propose the following considerations.

To the Athletics Department, we suggest keeping the online ticket system, but urge a new ticket design or printout that will prevent students from easily making copies. The University has spent so much time and money on the online system that it would be a mistake to revert to the old, cumbersome method of hardcopy ticket distribution.

Instead, scan online tickets and give students a wristband. These wristbands would correspond to different sections and would be necessary to gain entrance. They are also considerably harder to forge than a paper ticket.

Continue to maintain a seating plan that is unassigned. Assigning seats is hard to enforce, creates tension among fans and creates a domino effect of people sitting in the wrong section once only one person sits in the wrong spot.

We realize the application of wristbands creates the problem of longer lines at the gates. The obvious solution to this is to open more student entrances (perhaps some that are not hidden in the back, making students feel like second-class fans).

To Student Government, who has offered to fund the wristbands: make this the issue that defines your legacy. To many students, Student Government has seemed to lose sight of its primary goal -- advocating for student issues.

This is one of the most important issues you will face as a governing body and to be successful in advocating for us, you would win the support of your constituents who have not forgotten about Student Government's five finger discount of student football tickets two years ago.

This is an issue where Student Government can and should rise to the occasion and actually make a difference.

We submit these grievances, along with our best possible solutions, on behalf of the student body who has much to gain from the successful address of this problem.

Student Government and Athletics -- it's time to play ball.