Ticket office mixup causes ruckus

The ticket office's assistant manager, Chris Schappel, said, "We will let the students know when we would use line numbers" in the future to avoid future misunderstandings.

He said not using the numbers yesterday was not announced because the athletic department's decision was not made until after reports of pushing and shoving by students waiting in line for tickets to the Washington and Washington State games Feb. 2.

Students got in line yesterday as early as 5 a.m. to buy tickets for the last men's basketball home games of the season.

Employees from the McKale ticket office handle the extra student allotment of men's basketball ticket sales at Gallagher Mondays prior to that week's games.

At 7 a.m., event staff from McKale Center began handing out numbers to students who were in line. These tickets allowed the students to return three hours later to buy game tickets.

The numbers guaranteed students their place in line but didn't guarantee that students would get game tickets.

There are only 100 tickets available to students for each game, Schappel said, and many students who had line numbers did not get tickets because they sold out before their number was called.

When students who weren't at the theater when numbers were passed out began to arrive at Gallagher to purchase tickets at 10 a.m., they discovered they would not be able to buy them because they didn't have line numbers.

"I would have shown up at seven if I had known that I needed a ticket to get tickets," said Chris Morgan, a business freshman.

Many students felt the same way and voiced their opinions to the ticket office employees at Gallagher.

University police officers were called to the theater between 8 and 9 a.m. because of misunderstandings about the ticket process, but Cmdr. Brian Seastone, a University of Arizona Police Department spokesman, said police left because nothing was going on when they arrived.

This is not the first time line numbers have been used, Schappel said, adding that the athletic department decides when to use line numbers - usually when they believe there will be a large number of students on hand to purchase tickets.