Growing Problem With Students Getting Into Football Games (Updated 1pm)

'07 Football Fans General NCS Football57

Have you walked past the student entrance into football games recently? It takes students 30-90 minutes just to get into football games (if they don’t have to leave the line to go find a port-a-john during the wait. We saw this editorial in the Technician this morning, and thought SFN readers should take note.

We’ve noticed the student lines at Carter-Finley for a couple of years and think that whatever is happening is absurd. They’ve killed Hillsborough Street. They’ve killed the Greek system. They’re working hard on killing tailgating. Why not just go ahead and dissolve the Alumni Association NOW!? The alums currently being produced at NC State have such a lackluster social experience while in Raleigh that they won’t have enough fun experiences upon which to fondly reflect when they become successful to have any motivation to contribute to the University.

The student body has been concerned with two main things this fall: football and fees. Undergraduates pay $126.50 toward the intercollegiate athletic fee, which increased from $119 the previous spring. This is in addition to the intercollegiate athletic indebtedness fee that jumped from $25 last spring to $66 this fall. This is a huge increase with negligible returns, considering the fact that the new soccer and track complex has yet to open, I have never set foot in the Murphy Center, Vaughn Towers remains a liquor-fueled alumni haven and the number of Event One staff at football games has not noticeably increased.

Just like last fall, every time I enter the stadium, I am practically strip searched. On the other hand, the alumni I tailgate with stroll to their seats without hassle — airplane bottles tucked safely away in their pockets. Students are now paying more than ever to be treated like second class citizens.

I have a few problems with the comments in the editorial:

First, alumni do NOT ‘stroll’ to our seats with no problems. We also have un-necessary lines. I have been going to NC State games for over 30 years and rarely had to wait in lines until the lines’ sudden materialization about four years ago. They have never subsided; and it is miserable for alums to try to get into games on the East Side. (Not as miserable as the students’ experience, but far from “strolling to our seats”).

I always thought that my dissatisfaction was just personal impatience, so seeing some of the comments from other ADULT readers provide me some solace that I am not alone. Whatever happened to the pictures of the Carter-Finley expansion that they used to show us that included new bathrooms and gates around the stadium? They haven’t finished the job!!!!

Secondly, shut up about the ‘fees’. NC State’s athletic fees for students are easily amongst the LOWEST in the country. You pay $200 to support an ACC Athletics program and get FREE TICKETS to all football and basketball games?!?! And you WHINE as opposed to jumping for joy? Just shows how out of touch folks are with the real world.

Even when I was at State I wondered why our fees weren’t bigger. Many schools have mandatory athletics fees and THEN students have to actually BUY student season tickets for games. If you want to complain about student fees, then the most effective way to do so is to compare the fees to those of other ACC, SEC, Big 10 and Big 12 schools. Of course, once the student journalists start actually doing the work instead of whining they will not like what they see — that they have it better than almost everyone in the country.

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'07 Football Fans General NCS Football

57 Responses to Growing Problem With Students Getting Into Football Games (Updated 1pm)

  1. partialqualifier 09/17/2007 at 11:28 AM #

    I will agree on all accounts. However…I was asked to empty all pockets and practically searched to my underwear…and I am 34 year old male attending the game with my wife….and neither one of us are middle-eastern terrorists! Meanwhile…as we were leaving the game we counted no less than 12 airplane bottles beside us from the hooligans who sat next to us during the game. So…there is def some shaky entrance policies!

  2. highonlowe 09/17/2007 at 11:41 AM #

    I would suggest entering the game before t-30 seconds to kickoff, that may help.

  3. partialqualifier 09/17/2007 at 11:44 AM #

    ^ If that was for me….I entered the gates at 4:35…five minutes after they opened.

  4. MrPerfectionest 09/17/2007 at 11:44 AM #

    Things I agree with

    1) Stafford has gotten out of control with his agenda.
    2) With does seem like a giant waste of time and money. I hadn’t actually considered that this thing had a budget, and saddened that it does.
    3) Paying more in ticket fees for this stupid ticketing/entry setup and getting less/worse service is ridiculous. It further illustrates how little Stafford actually cares about students.

    Things I disagree with
    1) Students are adults. Well, only partially. Plenty of them can act like adults, but it’s the ones that get unruly drunk and piss the stands that ruin it for everyone. But Stafford shouldn’t be a pansy and punish them all, the cops should come in the stands and arrest the ones, letting the adults be adults.
    2) Student Government is a microcosm of our currently placated (lack of) activist culture. Editorials in the technician aren’t going to do squat to change things. Student Government, who should imo be attempting to organize protests on the Chancellors lawn about the sad state of student affairs are mouth pieces of the administration. I get the impression most of those kids are there for a resume builder and won’t dare go against the administration for fear of getting black balled or lose a valuable recommendation to the Ivy School of their choosing.

    True leaders will rise and organize something and get the collective voices heard. Is there a student like that still left at NCSU?

  5. Keystone 09/17/2007 at 11:54 AM #

    Although the problems with getting into football games as a student are obnoxious, even 45 minutes before kickoff, they’re minor compared to some of the problems during basketball season. Last year, it was not uncommon for the online ticketing system to assign multiple tickets for the same seat or punish students for not attending games that they actually attended. Why the athletics department continues to pay for a system that has so many flaws is beyond my comprehension.

    SFN: Because it is EASY!!! Fixing it would require: leadership, proactivity, creative thought and commitment to actual work. None of which exists inside of NC State’s Athletics or Student Affairs department

  6. highonlowe 09/17/2007 at 12:04 PM #

    ^^Nope. At students who complain about long lines.

  7. tcthdi-tgsf-twhwtnc 09/17/2007 at 12:04 PM #

    This is what happens when the dumb masses agree to give up their liberty for security. From what I understand the old Soviet Union was a very safe place to live.

  8. RAWFS 09/17/2007 at 12:16 PM #

    Pet Peeve: I keep seeing references to socialism and communism on Pack Pride and now here. While they may seem apt, the real words people should be using are “security state.”

    The implementations of Communism most certainly had totalitarian aspects, but certainly not the only form of government to have done so. Take a look at modern-day Syria, for example. They are by no means communists or even socialists, but they have every aspect of a near-totalitarian government.

  9. Texpack 09/17/2007 at 12:17 PM #

    They never searched you as a student when Monte Kiffin and Tom Reed were coaching the Wolfpack. The powers that be knew that this was not a product for sober people.

    Students shouldn’t have to wait in line over 30 minutes to get into a football game. Is every student still guaranteed entrance to every home football game? Without the hill, I would guess that practice has ended.

  10. Sam92 09/17/2007 at 12:22 PM #

    for people who like to drink, which as i recall included about 95% of 20 year-olds (guys, anyway), football and drinking are a marriage made in heaven

    the old school method (no big bottles) worked pretty well, as i recall, putting some limits on the fun but still allowing it

    if the cost of letting the kids come in without a body cavity search is the occasional bust and throwing out of unruly ones – so be it.

    as far as the heightened security having something to do with preventing terrorism – the return is entirely theoretical, but the imposition is very real, it’s just a meaningless burden on people trying to have a good time at a football game

  11. Keystone 09/17/2007 at 12:24 PM #

    Every student is not guaranteed a ticket. Normally it’s not difficult to get a student ticket, unless it’s a game like Carolina where people who don’t even care about football try to get tickets.

  12. packgrad2000 09/17/2007 at 12:29 PM #

    highonlowe-
    When I went to the UCF game I was walking through the fairgrounds parking lot (students) and around 4:30-4:45 remember seeing huge masses of students heading toward the stadium. I remember me and my friend I was with saying, “I wonder why they’re going in so early?” Now I know why. Plus now I believe student seating is unassigned..first come first serve so the earlier you get there the better the seating. Which is why when you look over at the student section they look crammed in in the lower section but you could lie down and take a nap in the upper deck.
    So from what I observed a good majority of the students were getting there plenty early.

  13. partialqualifier 09/17/2007 at 12:30 PM #

    I will agree that arriving earlier would solve many of the students’ problems. When I got there at 4:35 there was hardly any line at all at the students section. In contrast…at 5:30 the line was ridiculous! My advice would be to pass on that one last beer bong and show up a little earlier.

  14. LRM 09/17/2007 at 12:53 PM #

    From a more practical sense, we’re trying to sell ourselves as a big time program with an unmatched atmosphere, and yet the end zone and upper deck student sections were completely empty halfway through the first quarter. That would have been a tough sell on national TV.

    However, a full stadium before kickoff never seems to be an issue at Clemson or any of the SEC schools. Of course they probably don’t have to force a whole day of fun and tailgating into a very short window like we do.

  15. BoKnowsNCS71 09/17/2007 at 12:59 PM #

    I was out of town this past game but at the first game I was asked to open my pockets (58 yr old /w/m) so the problem with the mini-bottles occurs because some people are better smugglers than others.

    At the first game, I would say the student seats near me were about 5% full at kick off. It took half the first quarter to fill to 100%.

    I cannot understand the ticketing arrangements for the students. Why not tickets for a specific seat and picked up at the Box Office? How much time is spent authenticating the print out tickets that each student gets now. Wasn’t there a problem with forged tickets a year or so ago.

    I sit next to the infamous Section Pee. The kids there are great and the past problems resulted from the inability to monitor seating assignements by the CF staff (and perhaps copied tickets permitting too many in the same section). Fix the ticketing debacle and let kids come through any gate other than just the limited “Student” gates.

    As for protest, I went to State from 67 to 71 and that was protest. I was in Student Government and we made an effort to put the Student Center back in the control of the students body. But I suspect over the years, those gains were let go as time past.

  16. bTHEredterror 09/17/2007 at 1:10 PM #

    Pet Peeve: I keep seeing references to socialism and communism on Pack Pride and now here. While they may seem apt, the real words people should be using are “security state.”

    Nice semantics. I would say the correct term is “police state”, and I consider the Jeffersonian reference to be apt. Though I agree with the rest of your point, RAWFS.

    And while I can appreciate a little dissension and some protest from time to time, protesters should pick their battles wisely. With the post I saw last week regarding beer projectiles and the embarassing pissgate incident fresh in memory, student credibility is small on this issue.

  17. Great Dane Guy 09/17/2007 at 1:14 PM #

    This problem is simple: call up 10 or so other large state universities and see how they handle this process. get the pro’s and con’s of each. Make the needed changes to the cons aspect and implement. I would be happy to do this for them for a nominal fee of season tickets next year. Hell, we can start right here. Lets post how other large universities handle ticket distribution here in this thread. Then we can just forward this blog to the admin.

  18. tcthdi-tgsf-twhwtnc 09/17/2007 at 1:19 PM #

    How is student credibility hurt because one or a small number of students behaving badly? This is the same mentality that shortened tailgating because of an incident that occurred of campus with non-students. Those kids where grenades ready to go off. What happened just so happened to take place during tailgating at a NC State game. Your statements make it sound like all people have no credibility because of the shooting incident.

    This is exactly how the police state people take away your freedoms- I won’t call them rights because in some cases they may not be rights. Look how one person abused the rules, now we must take away freedoms from everyone so that the children can be safe. Makes me sick but I do understand the John Edwards ilk of this world have made it so administration have little choice.

  19. StateFans 09/17/2007 at 1:24 PM #

    Updated comments from SFN in the entry.

  20. Mike 09/17/2007 at 1:24 PM #

    I graduated in ’89, tix free for both football and basketball. Just had to wait in line, but the tix had seat numbers. How hard is that? The games I go to now, the ushers check every ticket coming in so cant even get into the sections unless you have a ducat for that section.

    Making matters worse, had that issue one game when I had my hands full of concessions and the usher wanted to see my ticket to get back. Ticket in my pocket, had no way to get it. Was barely carrying everything as it was, and no way could I put it all down, especially for people to step all over it. I asked if I could carry the stuff in and I would come back to show my ticket – or better yet, the user could go with me. I know crowd control is an issue, but there are better ways. Got 36 Barney Fife’s in CF.

  21. wufpaxno1 09/17/2007 at 1:28 PM #

    NCSU 1-2
    UNC 1-2
    WFU 1-2
    Duke 1-2
    ECU 1-2

    Wow, we are still in the hunt for the elusive State title that CTC and Bunting used to refer to. That is if you don’t count FCS teams like ASU.
    And we are 1-0 against teams from S. Carolina, maybe that is what influenced the odds makers in Vegas.

  22. newt 09/17/2007 at 1:31 PM #

    Piece of advice – Put your empty bottle back in your pocket after you pour your drink.

    You are less likely to get caught by a roving policeman if you don’t have bottles rolling around your feet.

    You will be less likely to be pointed out by those around you who are not drinking.

    You will reduce the litter for the cleanup crew, which are usually State students.

    Perhaps liquor will be viewed as less of a problem by the folks setting the stadium entrance policies and procedures.

  23. statered 09/17/2007 at 1:33 PM #

    I did see some faculty types monitoring the crowd with some of the cops on top of the hill from the student gates. I was hoping they were looking to see what a cluster it was so that changes could be made.

  24. BoKnowsNCS71 09/17/2007 at 1:44 PM #

    If the CF security would walk through the stands after the game, they would see the seat number areas with the most empty mini bottles (or the ones hidden underneath the ledge on the seats).

    I would be if they came during the very next game — the same person(s) would be there again with their full mini’s. But that would be too easy.

    I’ve only seen one person busted during a game — in the end zone seats where the security folks could watch from behind.

  25. BoKnowsNCS71 09/17/2007 at 1:52 PM #

    SFN — saw your addition on the fees. Agree. Those fees also give students full access to a gym, swimming pool, and outdoor facilities. Plus they can go and see every game in every sport.

    I have to pay $900 (2 tickets and parking fee) plus the WPC donation. Those luxury boxes in Vaugh Towers run about $50k. And all of this money goes to (attempting to) making WP Football better for all.

    When it comes down to it — alumni and students want a winning, competitive team. Why can’t we all get along?

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