Scalping Duke Tickets Takes Them From Deserving Fans

We get the tickets for free, and we sell 'em for a fortune. Tickets go up on e-Bay, and they get sold over the phone and e-mail.

It can be a pretty profitable venture. Especially for Duke University vs. UNC tickets.

I heard a story last week in which a couple of graduate students in a one-year graduate program sold their seventh-row tickets for $500 each.

As the story goes, they went shopping, out to eat and uptown on their profits.

This probably happens all the time-but it still makes me sick.

I could be sitting in those seats, but instead I will once again cheer on Carolina from home.

While I am a strong advocate of the senior distribution policy for Duke tickets, there are several "other" types of students who should not be allowed in this elite, one-time distribution. Students in one-year graduate programs and students in their last year of a graduate program are allowed the same "senior" status for this one game, and it's not fair.

Lots of these graduate students get these tickets and just turn around and sell them; they couldn't care less about the team or this very special game.

They see it as an easy way to make money.

This offends me. There are a lot of students, like myself, who do care about actually being inside the Smith Center for that annual rival face-off. It's a shame that so many tickets fall into undeserving hands.

Many of these graduate students didn't do their undergraduate years here and might not realize just how special this game is to many students. And if some of those students did do their undergraduate work here, it's also unfair to give them a second opportunity to go to the game over a student who hasn't gone at all.

While it is understandable that the Carolina Athletic Association wants to give graduate students a chance to catch this game too, (graduate students are people too,) they shouldn't be allowed the "senior" status for distribution, giving up some of the best seats to a bunch of scalper strangers. There is a large number of seniors who will be sitting in the "nosebleed" section, when they could be sitting in the lower-level seats that some graduate students have sold off.

At the Duke distribution a couple of weekends back, there were fewer than 100 tickets left for undergraduates. And it's justified for the majority of tickets to go to seniors, but in the future, graduate students should be mixed in with the undergraduate distribution. Seniors should be sitting in the best seats and shouldn't have to share this one-time privilege with graduate students. Make it a real "senior" distribution.

Scalping tickets is a big part of sports; there is no doubt that it isn't nice to pick up a ticket outside of a venue. But the Duke game is not just any other game; it's sacred to many students. So, for those scalper students selling off those tickets, check yourself and stop being so self-serving. Either go to the game and cheer on Carolina, or give them to someone who will.

Kate Hartig is a junior American Studies and English major from Norfolk, Va. E-mail her at Hartigk@aol.com with comments or tickets to Sunday's game. Feel free to come join her at Goodfellows to watch the game with a bunch of other students who don't have tickets.