Senior Night ticketing system hits snag

Seniors faced obstacles while attempting to buy Senior Pub Night tickets online this past Monday due to over-purchasing and communication errors between Integrated Student Information System (iSIS) and Tufts Tickets.

Ticket sales for the year’s first Senior Pub Night, which will take place at Tequila Rain tonight, opened on Sept. 23 at noon. Soon after, the Office for Campus Life (OCL) began receiving news about the problem.

Associate Director of OCL Laura DaRos clarified that the problems did not originate from any technical glitches in the Tufts Tickets system and that several issues had been resolved.

“Our Tufts Tickets system is working and continues to provide a convenient service to students as we intended,” DaRos told the Daily in an email.

Seniors wishing to purchase tickets faced two main issues, she said. The first type occurred after students attempted to purchase multiple tickets and the second resulted from the fact that some seniors were still listed as juniors on iSIS.

According to DaRos, Senior Pub Nights are only open to Tufts seniors and all Tufts tickets events are non-transferable. Therefore, students can only be admitted to Senior Pub Night if they are in possession of a Tufts ticket with a name that matches their Tufts student ID.

“Students that purchased multiple tickets had their duplicate tickets cancelled,” DaRos wrote. “They received a refund and those tickets were returned to the inventory so other seniors were able to purchase them.”

About a handful of seniors were not able to purchase tickets because they were still registered as juniors on iSIS, DaRos said. This incorrect class status may have occurred for students awaiting transfer credits, study abroad transcripts or summer session credits that were not yet submitted to the Registrar.

“Because they were listed as juniors, the Office for Campus Life did not manually update their Tufts Tickets user account to a 21+ Senior status,” DaRos wrote.

Senior Alexandra Geller discovered that she was part of this small group of students as she proceeded to ticket checkout last Monday.

“The page just kept refreshing on me,” Geller said. “I finally quit out of it and reopened it and then I got the message of ‘This is not available for your user type.’”

Rebecca Raskind, too, found that the site would not allow her to check out her tickets, though she encountered no other problems with the site.

“I was with my friend who was right next to me and it was working for her just fine,” Raskind, a senior, said. “I don’t really know what the difference was or why some people had trouble.”

DaRos explained that these students were able to purchase their Senior Pub Night tickets after personally contacting their respective class deans and verifying their senior status.

Both Raskind and Geller eventually bought tickets after reaching out to OCL for help, they said.

“A couple hours later, [DaRos] responded to me and said that they had confirmed my 21+ status, and that I was still able to get a ticket because luckily there were still some available,” Geller said.

While Geller was happy that she eventually was able to get tickets, she said she is still wary of the new iSIS network.

“I think I’ll give myself more time and prepare for problems, because I didn’t expect for there being problems this time,” she said.

Some seniors may still be angry about the mix-up, Raskind said, but she believes the OCL responded appropriately.

“I think people were just mainly a little bit confused about why some people’s accounts weren’t working,” Raskind said. “The OCL responded quickly enough ... that people were able to get tickets. I’m still super excited about Senior Night and I’m just really glad I got a ticket.”

In the meantime, DaRos said that the OCL is working to fix the problem for future senior events.

“We are continuing to work with University Tickets, the ticket system host, to implement features as they become available to make the ticketing process here at Tufts modern and convenient for students,” DaRos wrote.

She added that prior to the implementation of the Tufts Tickets system, students used to wait in line beginning at 8 a.m. to purchase tickets scheduled to go on sale at noon, causing them to miss class and other appointments.