Seniors queued up early on Friday, April 19 for Senior Week tickets — only to spend half their day waiting in a line that barely moved.
With over 1,000 students in the class of 2019, long waits were to be expected, but many expressed frustration at the line’s slow pace.
“I got in line with my friend Amanda at 7:30 a.m., a half an hour before ticket sales were scheduled to begin,” senior Melanie DeJong said. “Four and a half hours later, we were still in line. I only barely made the 12:25 bus to Eastman for my viola lesson.”
Tickets went on sale for 15 different events. Some, such as yoga, have only 50 tickets for sale, whereas the Senior Ball anticipates 650 people.
The organizers of the event — 2019 Class Council and Wilson Commons Student Activities — claim this to be the most efficient year yet.
“The actual data shows that more tickets were sold in less time than in all previous years,” WCSA wrote in an email to Campus Times.
WCSA also mentioned improvements like increasing the number of cash registers from one to three, although according to students only two were used for the majority of the day. The planners also chose one time when all tickets would go on sale, in lieu of staggered ticket sales, to stop students from having to line up repeatedly.
But some tickets are more coveted than others.
According to Senior Week Events Chair Julia Fraser, previous years saw tickets for the Local Brewery Tasting and Day at the Vineyard sell out quickly, and students with this in mind hurried to get there before 8 a.m., fearful of not being able to attend all the events they wanted.
“I think the problem was compounded by the fact that so many students decided to show up at the same time, but what can you do about that?” DeJong said. “We were worried the tickets would sell out, so we got there as close to the opening time as we thought would be reasonable. I assume all the other students in line were thinking the same thing.”
Most students walked away with passes to all the events they wanted — but they also left two-to-four hours later than expected.
“[Waiting in line] was an experience, for sure,” DeJong said. “But from the sound of it, they hadn’t run out of any tickets by the end of [the first day]. I could have slept in, waited in line for a half an hour, and gotten the same thing.”
Fraser, a senior herself, said that she is sympathetic to the students who had to wait so long.
“However, we are incredibly excited for Senior Week Events and cannot wait for the Class of 2019 to attend these events,” she added.
Senior week tickets are still available (with no lines) at the Common Market, and go on sale to non-senior undergraduates in May.
Corrections (4/30/2019): The article previously abbreviated Wilson Commons’ Student Activities as WSAC.
