Fall Ball seemed like business as usual at Tufts: People were unhappy with the ticketing process while hospitalizations crept toward a mass−casualty incident. Some of the problems students and faculty have with the implementation of this year's event do need to be fixed. Some, like the bottleneck, were a temporary inconvenience which need not concern coordinators in the future. Others, like the ticketing system and our collective inability (or refusal) to drink responsibly, need a good deal of work. Scalping tickets, however, is an issue on which I think most of the voices in our community are completely off base.
The moral condemnation of scalpers and the calls to place restrictions on scalping in the Code of Conduct or to add "harsh language" on future tickets ignore a few basic economic realities.
Admission has been free in the past, but the physical process of waiting in line to reserve tickets acted as a deterrent. Students who showed up a little late and saw the long line for tickets turned away and thought to themselves, effectively, "Fair is fair. I'll show up earlier next time." Students who were on the fence about attending didn't show up for lines at all. For those students it wasn't even worth it. But with tickets now available instantly, the disincentive of waiting in line has vanished. Students who were on the fence clicked "Order" and received a ticket they might not even really have used or wanted. Students who might have turned away at the prospect of lines also clicked "Order" and drained the supply of tickets even faster. What resulted was a situation in which some who had tickets didn't plan on using them, and others who really wanted to attend Fall Ball had no tickets. In that situation, no one's best interest was served.
Enter the scalper. Someone who, intentionally or not, decided to buy a ticket he or she wasn't going to use. Someone who then saw an entrepreneurial opportunity. Someone who decided to sell his or her ticket. There were students who valued a chance to attend Fall Ball. They bought a lot of tickets. That much is obvious.
Those who see a moral quandary in the resale of tickets ignore the fact that each transaction they condemn — each scalped ticket — represents a voluntary association between two people. Voluntary association and exchange are the foundational mechanisms which power every free economy, free society and free nation. I would go so far as to claim that voluntary association is the single purest moral interaction possible between two parties. Students who purchased tickets valued attending Fall Ball more than they valued the money they parted with for that chance. Students who sold tickets valued the money they received more than the experience they passed up. The interests of both parties were served, not perfectly, but as efficiently and fairly as was possible in the situation.
There are probably still countless members of this community who will self−righteously denounce scalping as immoral. The idea of profiting from the sale of property one owns, whether by merit or by chance, will remain in the minds of many unclean, dirty and among the most base of the human desires. No amount of discussion or debate will dislodge that sadly mistaken and ignorant dogma.
But even attacking the problem more broadly and examining rationally the incentives to scalp reveal the methods proposed by both faculty and students to be woefully inadequate. The core problem, the lack of a simple deterrent for those who did not really want a ticket, created an active incentive to scalp after tickets were inefficiently allocated. The solution must be a simple, enforceable deterrent. Laws regulating, limiting or banning the resale of tickets exist in almost every country in the world, yet those laws do almost nothing to prevent widespread scalping and resale of tickets at almost every performance or sporting event. The position that an addition to the student Code of Conduct will make any difference in the scalping of free tickets is, frankly, absurd. The moral elitism behind the calls to prevent the scalping of tickets has, bluntly, no place in the conscience of anyone studying, teaching or working at a free university.
If we really want to decide for individuals other than ourselves what they can and cannot buy or sell, if we really want to decide for others how they can and cannot conduct their private financial lives, then the solution is obvious. Moralizing and brow−beating simply do not work on "greedy" entrepreneurs. Disincentives do. Charge $5 per ticket, and put the funds toward solutions to Fall Ball's other problems or even more free student events. Students who don't want to attend as much as others will be deterred by the fee and the inconvenience of an online transaction. A majority of the entrepreneurs, who I don't accept as in the wrong, will be deterred by the prospect of losing $5. The game is no longer win−win for the seller. Students who really want to go to Fall Ball will live with the price. The financial disincentive would serve the same practical purpose as waiting in line has served in the past.
Best of all, we won't be dictating how members of our community conduct their private financial and personal lives.
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