As you (might not) know, last weekend was Grad Student Campout for basketball tickets.
For the uninitiated, Campout is like Krzyzewskiville, only for grad students (which shockingly does not mean it's less fun and more work). Having participated in both, I can tell you that both involve lots of drinking and partying, both involve attendance checks and both are events that unify their target student bodies. (Note: I wasn't there, because I had to be at the hospital, and also because I forgot to register.)
But there are a couple of key differences. While K-ville lasts from Christmas (sometimes) until the UNC game, Campout is only a weekend. While finishing K-ville only gets you tickets to the UNC game, Campout is for season tickets. And most importantly, while completing K-ville guarantees you tickets to the UNC game, only about a third of those who complete Campout will win season tickets in a lottery held at the end of the weekend.
For pretty much every game during the season (excepting, obviously, the UNC game), any given undergrad can show up at game time and walk right in. But grad students need their special grad student tickets, and only about one third of the students completing Campout have them. So, basically, it's three times harder for a grad student to get tickets compared to an undergrad.
One of the reasons for this disparity is that there are fewer grad student spots in Cameron Indoor Stadium as a percentage of student population. Even though this fact harms my personal chances of going to basketball games, I think it makes sense: Basketball games should really belong to the undergrads. Kind of like Shooters or Thursday nights at Sati's.
But the numbers still don't add up. And that's why the whole concept of Campout is flawed.
For undergrads, supply of tickets equals demand for tickets in every game except the Carolina game. That's why students can show up at game time and get in. For the Carolina game, demand exceeds supply. K-ville exists to artificially suppress demand for the Carolina game.
For grad students, the Carolina game is included in the season ticket package. This type of system fails to take into account the fact that supply and demand for Carolina game tickets is different than tickets for all other games.
For a November game against Cornell, sleeping outside for a weekend is far too much to ask; but for the UNC game, sleeping outside for a weekend is far too little. Thus, more students will complete Campout than can be accommodated in the Cameron grad student section because they want to be at the Carolina enough to sleep outside for a weekend. This necessitates a lottery.
Of course, there's nothing wrong with the lottery on its face. A longer or more strenuous process is impossible for grad students. (Actually, I honestly don't know what real grad students do all day, so maybe they do have time to wait outside to get into basketball games. I, meanwhile, currently spend most of my days learning how to save lives-read: trying not to make a fool of myself in front of real doctors and patients-so I clearly have no time to wait outside for basketball games.)
But completing Campout doesn't just earn the Campout-completer tickets to the Carolina game, it earns him tickets to every game for the whole season-even games where the demand is lower and for which every grad student who would want to attend could probably be accommodated. Like the Cornell game.
So there are two possible solutions.
The first, and the one that I would lean towards, is to scrap the idea of camping out for grad student tickets altogether. This would never happen, because (as is the case with K-ville) a lot of people in charge are tied to "tradition."
But camping out for grad student tickets is inadequate for ticket distribution because it is an insufficiently strenuous task for determining who gets Carolina tickets and a far too strenuous task for determining who gets tickets to low-demand games.
All that Campout does is make it more difficult for people who would love to attend low-demand games to do so. It means that people who aren't free for one particular weekend in September will have a tougher time getting into basketball games.
(Yes, I know that grad students can walk into any game where there's space 30 seconds before game time, but come on. If there's a game going on, I don't want to wait to get in, be turned away 30 seconds before game time, and then miss the first 10 minutes of the game trying to get home. This is not exactly an attractive option.)
I'm not saying that the "giant party that brings grad students together" aspect of Campout needs to be eliminated too. It just isn't necessary to tie that aspect to the handing out tickets aspect. There could be a giant Campout party, but without constant attendance checks. Tickets could still be distributed by the existing lottery, or better yet, by a new-and-improved lottery that hands out single game tickets.
Every grad student who completes Campout would be eligible to get tickets for every game. They all vow to put the price of a full season ticket into their FLEX accounts and maintain that value over the course of the season. Two days before each game, each Campout-completer puts his or her name into an online ticket lottery for that game. The winners of the lottery get tickets for that game, and their FLEX accounts are debited. Add a provision stipulating that two no-shows means that Campout-completers lose their Cameron privileges for the rest of the season.
For high-demand games, participation in the lottery will be high and it will be difficult to get tickets. But for low-demand games, participation will be low and it will be easy to get tickets.
Of course, that probably makes too much sense.
Alex Fanaroff, Trinity '07, is a second-year medical student. His column runs every other Thursday.
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