The UW men's basketball team has been so successful the past few years that ticket demand skyrocketed. So the Athletic Department, after getting much student input, implemented a weighted lottery system to decide who would get tickets. This was a good idea that the fans themselves played a large part in coming up with.
When the Athletic Department ran the lottery, however, it somehow neglected to process 625 ticket requests. This has created a situation in which people who thought they had tickets were disappointed to learn that those tickets might not be available to them anymore, and could lead to mass confusion. Already, those waiting in line to claim their tickets have been asked to leave, and the Athletic Department scrambled to find a way to solve the problem they themselves are responsible for creating.
The entire scenario is highly unfortunate. However, given that what happened already cannot be reversed, the Athletic Department is going about finding a solution in the best way available. While running another ticket lottery might change who receives the tickets, it is the fairest way to re-incorporate the 625 students who were not included in the first place.
In addition, students who put in ticket requests get to vote on how the new lottery will work. They will decide if 1,500 students get season tickets and the rest of those who entered the lottery get a four-game package, or if 2,100 students will get tickets in a winner-take-all system. This further shows that the athletic department has the students in mind in the ticket process. Allowing the fans to decide a solution to the ticket lottery fiasco-just as the distribution process was decided with help from the students-demonstrates that this process is truly for the students who have grown to love the Badgers.
It would be great if the Athletic Department had counted all ticket requests in the first place. There would be no problem now, and though some fans would have been dismayed not to receive tickets, they would have realized the process was fair. However, the lottery process did hit a major snag, and the manner in which the Athletic Department has chosen to handle that snag is fair and, perhaps more importantly, shows how much UW athletics values fan input.
