Let students sit courtside

I've watched many a college game on television, and it always seemed to me that the rabid students in the ACC conference and the rest of the Pac-10 were always courtside, with prime seating only for students. So I decided to do a little research. I wrote every Pac-10 school and every university ranked in last year's AP Top 25 Poll, and I found out some disturbing facts.

Not ONE of the schools I wrote claimed they denied their students prime courtside seating. Duke University reserves every lower level seat for their students. The public state schools sit their students in special reserved seats where you can actually see what happens during every point of the game. Even our despised rivals, the ASU Sun Devils, who couldn't put together a winning team with Michael Jordan, seat their students in wonderful courtside seats.

I love this University, and I love the fact that I can walk by possible future NBA stars around the campus, but I would like to be able to see them at the games. For an arena that sits 14,000-plus we are relegated to 2,350 seats, tops.

That is seven alumnus, children, high school kids, or even visitors to the state for every one, excitable, proud U of A student.

We live here, we work here, we play here. Why are we shunned to the background? Why do we have to cheer and scream from the cheap seats?

I mean, this is our University, isn't it?

But then, I guess it's not. It's not our University, it's not our arena, and it's certainly not our team. It belongs to the people who pay large amounts of money to the athletic department so they have somewhere to go on Wednesday nights and Sunday afternoons. So spread the word; the illusion that we have college basketball here is gone and the truth is now clear.

The Arizona Wildcats are not an NCAA team, they are a team of professional basketball players.

Dave Nelson
History senior