SGB, sports dept. holding a forum

Thousands of students attend Pitt athletics events every year.

Few, however, get the chance… Thousands of students attend Pitt athletics events every year.

Few, however, get the chance to influence decisions about way the sporting events are carried out – until now.

This Wednesday, at 9:00 p.m., Pitt’s athletics department and Student Government Board will lead an open forum, where students can give their feedback to proposed changes and suggest their own ideas.

“It’s a chance for students to give us their feedback,” said Jim Earle, Pitt’s associate athletics director for New Business and Fan Development. “We want to make sure they continue to have a good time.”

“It’s a real opportunity for them to tell us what they like and what they don’t,” added Earle, who will lead the forum with SGB President Brian Kelly, Board member Matt Hutchinson and several other professionals involved in coordinating athletics events.

The panel-led discussion will focus on several issues involving football and men’s basketball events, including football tailgating, ticket prices for both sports and possible changes affecting student sections.

Kelly said he will suggest a pre-purchase plan for spaces in the student parking section at Heinz Field. While students may have to wait several hours in line somewhere the day before a game to buy parking passes, he said, it would eliminate the need for students to drive down to the lot early on game days. Under the current system, students frequently circle the lot until a space opens, hoping to win a spot on the first-come, first-serve system, Kelly said.

“It would get some sort of certainty,” Kelly said of the parking pass program.

The panel will also open for discussion the idea of creating an upgrade system, by which students could pay to upgrade extra tickets in the student section – which require a Pitt ID for use – into guest tickets.

“It would legitimize it, where you wouldn’t have to worry about it,” Kelly said. He described situations in which students’ visiting friends, wanting to attend football games, must borrow other Pitt students’ IDs to attempt to get into the student-only section. If students could upgrade their tickets, guests would be allowed into the student section with the upgraded tickets – a situation that could also make Pitt seem more responsible for non-students’ behavior in the Pitt section.

The panel will also present the possibility of increasing ticket prices, both for football and basketball games. Noting that student season tickets to Penn State football games cost $145, Kelly said Pitt’s student season ticket price increased from $20 to $25 last season. He said that a higher price might get rid of “casual buyers,” who may buy a season pass at a low price and only attend one or two games.

“We don’t want to price students out of being able to go to games,” Kelly added, explaining that when students buy season tickets and do not attend the games, they prevent the athletics department from selling single-game student tickets.

If the price went up and the demand for season tickets went down, he said, single-game student football tickets would be available for the more casual buyers. Students could then attend the games of their choosing, without forcing them to take tickets to games they don’t plan to attend- eliminating the number of student seats left empty by absent season ticket holders.

Kelly said he does not want the forum to focus on incidental problems, like when the server crashed during this year’s basketball season ticket sales.

“That’s not something that we want to focus on for 20 minutes,” Kelly said.

Earle added that the computer server problem has been addressed and should not be a problem in the future.

“We’ll use a new computer server,” Earle said, explaining that the ticket sale plan, in which students could register for season tickets online, will be used again next year.

“We’re upgrading our computer system – quite an expensive upgrade,” he added.

The panel would like to tackle the issue of the men’s basketball attendance record for this season. While the competition for season tickets has been great in the past two years, students have filled an average of only 420 of the 1,400 student seats this year.

The average, though lowered by the sparsely attended handful of games played during winter break, is nevertheless a good deal lower that the forum leaders would like it to be in the future.

“We clearly want to see more students at the games,” Kelly said.

Kelly said the forum might look into eliminating some of the seats in the 200 level of the student section, packing more people into the courtside section instead.

“I know a lot of students who, if they don’t get courtside seats, they’re not going to come,” Kelly said.

Earle added that moving some of the student seats from the 200 level to courtside would not only bring students closer to the game, but it would add to the 11,108 seats currently available to – and actively sought by – the general public.

The forum, which panel members said should last about 90 minutes, will allow Pitt students to line up behind a microphone and give feedback or suggestions. Although anyone is welcome to attend, only students will be allowed to speak. Panel members will then bring the students’ responses back to the athletics department for discussion.

Students attending the forum should enter the Petersen Events Center at the main lobby, as if they were attending a basketball game. The doors will open at 8:30 p.m. Those who cannot attend, but would like to contribute to the discussion, can e-mail their comments to sgb@pitt.edu.