Ever since the helmets were leather, football has been popular at the University, especially within its student body. That popularity mandates strict rules on student tickets for football games. In recent times, students wishing to use the discount $5 per game tickets had to pick them up in person at the Coleman Coliseum Ticket Office and present their ACTion cards along with a ticket at football games.
The advent of better, cheaper information technology begged a simple question: Couldn't we just put our tickets on our ACTion cards?
The athletics department, along with the SGA, has given us a simple answer: yes.
While the details of the plan are still being worked out, the upcoming football season should be paper-free for UA students. It's a great idea, one that should have been implemented as soon as technology permitted. It will simplify things at stadium gates because the old process of presenting both ticket and ACTion card will be simplified to ACTion card only, so that should speed up the sometimes painfully slow process of getting into Bryant-Denny Stadium on game days.
We often criticize the SGA for failing to produce tangible results, but this time, they actually produced something they set out to achieve.
Louise Crow, SGA vice president for Student Affairs, campaigned in the most recent election on making football tickets more "student-friendly," but the first meetings on the issue were held last fall.
The final details of this initiative are still under wraps, and we have just one suggestion: the free transfer of tickets should not be restricted under the new system. Not all students who buy tickets go to the games - we're realists here.
Some students buy tickets and only go to a few games. Others make a hefty profit in selling their entire ticket packages, and why shouldn't they? It's their right. When those who can't go or are unwilling to go to the games sell their tickets, then hungry buyers who weren't able to get tickets are able to experience the fun and passion of a day at Bryant-Denny. Sure, prices might be far more expensive than the $5 face value, but those are the prices our campus black market supports.
Paperless football tickets are a great idea, one we completely support. But they should be swapped just as easily as their tree-killing forerunners. Any system that lessens the ability of students to transfer or sell their tickets is a system that fails the students of this University.
Our View is the consensus of the CW editorial board.
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