Students planning to validate at midnight tonight for the Virginia game Sunday will be out of luck.
After a meeting with Head Line Monitor Roberto Bazzani, a senior, Tuesday, administrators agreed to suspend validation for the next two men's basketball games at home.
"The purpose of the validation system for the University was to see if Cameron [Indoor Stadium] was filling up, so it could donate any extra seats to charity," Bazzani said. "However, people were validating for all the seats, and not everyone showed up. We weren't packing Cameron, and we couldn't donate them to charity. The system wasn't working for the administration."
The line policy will revert to the walk-up line policy. Students wanting to secure a spot in Cameron for the Virginia game Sunday or the Clemson game Jan. 19 must line up outside the stadium before the respective contests. Bazzani said the online counter-which was used to keep track of how many students validated-will still keep track of how many people are in line at any given time.
Bazzani announced the change to students through a message sent Wednesday night to members of the "K-Ville 2007/2008" group on Facebook. He also urged students to "pack Cameron."
After the Clemson game, the administration will evaluate attendance and decide whether to eliminate the validation system. If the student section does not fill up to capacity, then the administration will likely decide to give away some seats to charity.
Ever since the new validation system was enacted for the Blue-White scrimmage Oct. 27, some students have complained that it was unfair and unnecessarily complicated.
"I was pretty excited when I heard they changed the policy," said sophomore Ben McCormick. "I've been unable to validate for three different games this year. Once I was sick and another time was doing homework and I missed the validation. I had to sit in the back of the student section, which was really frustrating for me."
Junior Sunny Kantha, Duke Student Government's vice president for athletics and campus services, has been working closely with Bazzani and Associate Director of Athletics Mitch Moser throughout the process. Although he was not able to attend the meeting Tuesday, Kantha said DSG supported suspending the validation system on the basis that it was technologically unfair to students. "If one student has a slower Internet connection than another student, then he would be at a disadvantage in validating," he said.
Over the past few months, some students have suggested alternate systems that combine the old and the new. Freshman Michael Warady proposed a "hybrid" system at the DSG town hall meeting last semester.
"A hybrid system could reserve the first 100 spots for a walk-up line and allocate a certain number of seats for the validation system," he said. "That way, the students that most want to get into games can get seats in the first few rows."
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