This weekend, I was lucky enough to see the NCAA men's basketball defending champions play at McKale Center. My tenth row ticket set me back $4. To top it all off, I did not have to win a lottery to have the right to buy it. All I had to do was carry my s tudent ID to the ticket office the day before the game, present my $4, and I was able to see the Pac-10's marquee matchup, UCLA vs. UA, battle each other in a great game.

Some of you out there are probably saying, "Bill Frieder will comb his hair before I can get tenth-row tickets for the UCLA game for $4 and not have to win the lottery." Well, now it can be done thanks to some of the folks in ASUA, crusaders of student ca uses everywhere. Then you might say students may have been able to buy the tickets after camping out the night before to get in line to buy them. Wrong again, thanks to the most apathetic student body in the country.

I've been at the UA for four years, and in that time I've only heard complaints when basketball season rolled around. Students have too hard of a time getting tickets. We have to enter a lottery in order to earn the right to buy season tickets where the odds of winning are as bad as one in 10 after a Final Four year and as good as one in four after a first-round exit (nothing in between). Those who are lucky enough to win the lottery can only buy two tickets, and for only half of the season.

We complained that the system should be more like the one at Duke, where students get the best seats on a first-come, first-served basis every game. We shouldn't be giving the best seats to non-students, no matter how much money they have. After all, the guys on the court are our peers. They're representing us, so why don't we get the best seats in the house? This was all I heard from people who lost the lottery year after year.

This season, there is a new policy in effect. If you didn't win the lottery, you can buy a pair of tickets in the bottom section (albeit behind the basket) the week of the game. I went in Thursday hoping I might get something for the UCLA game, but doubt ing there would be something left of the 500 that were put on sale. This is a hoops college, and any game tickets would be snapped up as soon as they went on sale (which was Wednesday). Not this time. I was amazed to get great seats to a great game for a low price, 36 hours after they went on sale.

I think this is a great policy. It allows the maximum number of students to see a game in a good seat for a low price. It was well publicized in newspapers and in flyers around campus. So there is just one last problem with this system. Why were there onl y 26 tickets sold for the first game? Worse, why were there empty seats at the UCLA and USC games?

The answer lies in an apathetic student body. Where are all the whiners of the last few seasons? The powers that be did their part in making tickets more available to us, so why didn't we buy them all? I don't have the answer to those questions.

However, if the rest of the games aren't sellouts, I'd scrap the plan for next season and sell the 500 seats to the general public, who are willing to pay more for them than students are. You can lead a student to McKale, but you can't make him watch the game. At this point, you probably couldn't get students to go if you mailed the tickets to their house, free of charge.

I'm not sure who came up with this idea or who authorized it, but thank you. I won't have to pay scalpers' prices, win a lottery or camp out to get tickets. All I have to do is grab $4 and my student ID and head down to McKale Center at my leisure.

Ted Dubasik is an accounting and international business senior.