By Laura Nichols
COLLEGIAN STAFF WRITER
Student complaints regarding the new paperless ticket system were addressed by university and Ticketmaster officials at Wednesday night's general meeting of the University Park Undergraduate Association (UPUA).
Associate Athletic Director Greg Myford, Assistant Ticket Manager Joel Diamond and executive vice president of technology for Ticketmaster Dave Scarborough discussed issues students have had with the new system.
"By and large, we know the system is working," Myford said. He added that while the athletic department has seen success with the new system, they are continually looking to make improvements.
A major topic was the selling and forwarding of tickets. Myford said in the past three games, 3,600 students sold tickets successfully, 1,900 tickets were forwarded and 3,500 seats were blocked.
Guest tickets are no longer available for Saturday's "Whitehouse" game against Iowa. So far, 1,200 guest tickets have been sold for other games throughout the season, but only 24 total were allocated for guests.
Myford said only 23 tickets total have been sold to Penn State students for the Ohio State game, and no guest tickets will be made available. Myford said this assures the stadium will be "filled to the brim" with Penn State students who already had or wanted tickets.
Another issue raised was where the money goes when a student sells a ticket. Myford confirmed that it does get deposited onto a student's LionCash, but in the event a student does not have LionCash, they will receive a check encompassing all of the ticket sales they made during the season.
The last major discussion of the night was over the UPUA downtown office. Located at the corner of Allen St. and Beaver Ave., the office was leased by UPUA last year with $6,000 of leftover funds from the 2008-09 budget. Governmental Affairs Chairwoman Colleen Smith drafted legislation with her committee to allow more use in this office. Director of Media Christopher Nock said the office would serve multiple purposes like off-campus representative office hours and meetings with State College borough government officials.
Following discussion on the proposed legislation, UPUA President Gavin Keirans (senior-business management) urged the assembly to send it back to committee.
"It seemed obvious that the representative didn't have the kind of input on the legislation that they should have before it went to the floor," Knock (junior-public relations) said. "A lot of people were uneasy with the way it was, and want to have more time to look at it."
Nock said Smith (sophomore-biology) will be opening up her committee to other assembly members in order to make the necessary amendments to the pending policy.
UPUA members held a moment of silence before their meeting for the late Joe Dado, who died earlier this week.
Keirans said he realized how tough of a week it has been for everyone in the Penn State community and thanked everyone for their support.
To e-mail reporter: lcn5019@psu.edu
