Snubbed seniors still angered by Duke ticket lottery

More than 50 emails from angry seniors demanding to know why they didn’t get tickets through the UNC-Duke basketball lottery flooded the Athletic Ticket Office inbox Thursday.

After a lottery notification glitch Wednesday night, many seniors said they were worried they had slipped through the cracks, missing their opportunity to attend the Feb. 8 game.

But Clint Gwaltney, associate athletic director for the ticket office, said all seniors are guaranteed a ticket to the game through their “senior priority status,” unless that status has been used before.

“All seniors who have not won on priority status before, and applied correctly through the lottery, received a ticket this year,” Gwaltney said.

Senior priority status is based on the number of credit hours that a student has, said Caitlin Goforth, president of the Carolina Athletic Association.

The registrar compiles a list of all of the eligible students and sends it to the ticket office every year before the Duke game.

Students receive an email saying they are graduating, and if they are not, they must go to the registrar to correct it.

After all lottery requests are received, the ticket office checks that list with past records to ensure that no one has already used their priority status.

Every qualified student who has not previously used their senior priority status and did not waive it gets a ticket.

But senior Carrie Dobbins said she specifically waived her senior status as a junior, and still didn’t receive a ticket this year.

“I was bummed that I didn’t get a ticket because I thought all seniors got tickets,” she said.

Gwaltney said he has already addressed another case in which a senior had not used his priority status before and did not receive a ticket. Exceptions like that will be considered by the ticket office if brought forward, he said.

The ticket office has answered each of the 50-plus emails individually in order to handle it on a case-by-case basis.

Goforth said she has received only two emails with direct complaints about the process, and one about priority status. She said that the student had already used her priority status previously, and was unaware that it’s a one-time privilege.

It is possible to qualify for senior priority status as early as sophomore year if a student has the credits, Goforth said.

Ultimately the responsibility falls on students, she said.

“The low number of complaints that I have received shows that the policy is pretty effective, but we are always open to suggestions on how to make it clearer.”

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