(Sam Heathcote -- The Beacon)
By The Beacon Editorial Board
Last year, the Homecoming dance was short of selling out by only three tickets. Last year, students could still buy tickets at the door the night of the Homecoming dance. And last year, you could give or sell your ticket to someone else and still get into the dance.
But this year, things were different. The tickets sold out before the night of the dance, people rode buses all the way to the Melody Ballroom to be told they couldn't purchase tickets at the door or that the tickets they got from friends were not valid for them. This made some people upset.
So upset, in fact, that students yelled at Jillian Smith, the director of Student Clubs. So distraught, evidently, that they showed up at CPB director Hilary White's dorm room to beg for more tickets.
Whether or not information about dance tickets was handled smoothly by CPB, it is simply inappropriate and rude to yell at a UP staff member. This kind of behavior by even one student degrades the standards of the UP community as a whole and should not be tolerated.
It is also terribly rude and obnoxious to stalk the CPB Director to her dorm room to demand more tickets, no matter how badly you wanted to go to Homecoming.
These confrontations and problems could have been solved by CPB clarifying the parameters of dance tickets ahead of time.
For starters, CPB should have advertised that the tickets were limited and that there may not be enough to sell them at the door the night of the dance.
CPB also should have informed students that if they bought their tickets from CPB their student IDs would be attached and therefore they could not sell them to other students.
Knowing that the dance nearly sold out the previous year, that they had the same venue with limited capacity and that this year's freshman class is the largest ever, CPB should have been prepared to sell out.
Next time CPB should clearly inform students that tickets are limited. CPB should also decide whether it is going to set aside tickets to sell at the door or if tickets can sell out on campus.
CPB should also clearly inform students that they can't sell or give their tickets to others because ID numbers correspond with tickets.
Hopefully next year, with these changes, Homecoming will be another successful event.
