Facing an inevitable change in the current football voucher exchange program, UW-Madison students voted to trade in their vouchers on game day, the UW-Madison Athletic Department said Monday.
Current season ticket-holders took part in an online poll last week and chose the game-day exchange system over one which would have entailed a one-time exchange before the season began. Under that plan, students would have retained the same seat every game.
\I think we believed [the game-day exchange] was the one [students] would select,"" said UW-Madison Deputy Athletic Director Jamie Pollard.
Pollard said the feeling among Athletic Department officials was that students preferred the game day exchange option because they would not have to sit in the same seats for the entire season.
The game-day voucher exchange program received just over 58.2 percent of the vote, or 3,402 out of 5,845 votes. Students will line up at Camp Randall on game day and will be able to exchange their voucher, and only their voucher, for a ticket. The alternate plan would have allowed for students to hold up to 11 tickets.
""We've had dialogue with many of our peer institutions and a game day pick-up and entry has been successful at a number of schools,"" UW-Madison Athletic Director and head football coach Barry Alvarez said in a statement.
Since 1994, students had been lining up on Wednesdays to exchange their vouchers for tickets, sometimes missing classes to do so. This raised concerns among UW-Madison officials and contributed to this change in the voucher exchange system, Pollard said in an April 8 press conference.
Pollard also addressed mounting concerns regarding the abuse of the current system by some students.
UW-Madison Police Captain Brian Bridges said UW-Madison police will soon begin discussing their role in the new exchange program with UW-Madison officials, but nothing has yet been decided.
""Any way the tickets are distributed poses a challenge,"" he said, ""and it's all in the operational details and it's a little too early to know what those are yet.""
In a separate vote, students also voted strongly in favor of a full-season ticket package for UW-Madison men's basketball and narrowly defeated a proposal to advance the standing of the 900 students who were originally selected to receive tickets for the 2004-'05 season, but ultimately did not.
