Tickets for Friday's Fall Ball event are available beginning today, with slight changes to the ticket distribution process that organizers hope will make for a less frustrating experience for students.
Long lines for tickets at the Mayer Campus Center information booth marked last year's event, the first Fall Ball to be ticketed and have a cap on attendance. Concerns voiced by students have prompted the Office for Campus Life (OCL) to make changes to the previous system, in particular to keep students waiting in line more informed about ticket availability.
In all, 2500 tickets are available for Fall Ball, OCL Director Joe Golia said. Tickets are available from 12 noon to 2 p.m. today and tomorrow, between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. on Thursday and on Friday from 10:30 a.m. until all tickets have been distributed.
Potential attendees who are waiting to collect tickets will receive slips of paper to confirm that they are one of the first 600 students in line, 10 minutes before the box office opens for each distribution time slot.
"Students who don't get that [slip of paper] know that they most likely won't get into that time slot," Programming Board Co-chair Adam Fischer, a senior, said.
Fischer said the change is being implemented to prevent students from being left empty-handed after a fruitless wait.
"[OCL is] ensuring that students are aware that if they're toward the end of the line, or past a certain point, they most likely won't be getting a ticket," he said. "Last year, students would line up and when the time slot began, the line would start moving, but students really had no gauge of whether or not they'd be getting tickets. It was very frustrating for many of my friends who spent a lot of time and had absolutely no idea whether or not they'd be getting tickets."
The new system is also designed to discourage students from cutting the line, according to Tufts Community Union President Sam Wallis, a senior.
Golia agreed with this assessment. "One of the biggest problems last year was students cutting the line at the last minute," he said. "A lot of students came in and complained about that."
Like last year, the time slots have been spread out throughout the week to allow students with different schedules to have a chance to obtain tickets.
"They're staggered in such a way that basically every student should be able to get tickets because obviously students have class at different times," Fischer said.
He also added that other changes are being implemented to hasten ticket collection. Staffing levels will be increased, with three people working at the Information Booth to distribute tickets instead of last year's one person. Additionally, ticket distributors will also be swiping students' identification cards instead of physically highlighting names on a list.
Fischer said that OCL was responsive to complaints about last year's system. "They recognize this because it's something that they want to try to fix," he said.
Golia is confident that all these changes will significantly improve students' ticket collection experience. "I think it will move the process along a lot quicker," he said.
Despite the inconvenience of making Fall Ball ticketed, Wallis said that the high demand for tickets last year showed students' continued enthusiasm for the event.
"We really liked seeing people get excited for it," Wallis said. "It was like a Duke basketball game, it gets people into it, and that's a really cool thing."
