Letters to the Editor

Athletic Department thankful for school spirit

On behalf of the Department of Athletics, our staff and our student-athletes, I would like to take a moment to thank each and every USF student who has shown their support by attending our football games each of the last two weeks. I firmly believe your outstanding participation has helped our team achieve its current 2-0 record. Your enthusiasm, excitement and encouragement have helped to create an environment in which our team can best succeed.

Walking onto the field before and during our games, our staff has never seen the north end zone as jam packed and covered in green and gold … much of it body paint! The loud wall of noise coming from that end is what makes for a great home-field advantage. I hope you continue to come and cheer our USF student-athletes at all of the sporting events this season.

Your support of the Bulls promotes interest in our football team and University in both the Tampa Bay region and the nation. The student section heightens the excitement level for each fan in attendance and is part of what makes college football such a special experience for an entire university.

I know many members of our team made it a point to exchange high fives with you after both games to show their appreciation. Please consider this letter a high five from me to all of you.

Our next home game on Friday, Sept. 29 against Rutgers is our Big East opening game and will be televised nationally on ESPN. We look forward to seeing all of you in full force again as we display to the nation our USF spirit.

Doug Woolard is the USF director of Athletics


SG ticket sales unfair

“Re: “Ticket sales raise fairness questions,” by Ryan Blackburn, Sept. 5.

After reading about this week’s sales of tickets for the USF-UCF football game Saturday and how they were sold, I was surprised Student Government did not plan better than that. It would have been very simple to limit students to 10 or so tickets per purchase, giving everyone in line a fair chance of getting tickets. If an entire organization wanted tickets for everyone in their group, then they should have sent multiple people to buy tickets for them and not one person to buy 400 tickets. There were people in the line who skipped classes and waited hours to buy tickets, only to be turned away because a bunch of people were greedy and did not think of everyone else. Hopefully, SG has learned from this situation and will make sure not to make that mistake again.

Amanda Adams is a senior majoring in biology.


Student Government made many errors with ticket sales

Re: “Ticket sales raise fairness questions,” by Ryan Blackburn, Sept. 5.

Am I the only person who thinks it’s absolutely ludicrous that one student can single-handedly purchase one-third of the student tickets to the UCF game? That’s exactly what Charlie Aguirre, interfraternity council treasurer, did over the course of Monday and Tuesday.

On Monday, Mr. Aguirre purchased 120 of the 500 available tickets, roughly 25 percent. But that wasn’t enough for him. After the quick sellout on Monday, caused largely by Aguirre, Student Government held an emergency meeting. This meeting concluded with a decision to sell 750 more tickets. Greed overcame Aguirre, and he purchased 300 of those additional 750 tickets (40 percent).

As greedy as Aguirre was, this shouldn’t have been allowed in the first place. SG claimed only one ticket was allowed per University ID number. That’s nice and all, except they checked a total of ZERO University ID numbers.

Not only could a student get more than one ticket for their number, they could get one (or 400) with no number at all. And not only did SG fail to disallow mass ticket purchases, it encouraged them by offering free tickets for those purchasing large amounts.

SG should have capped the number of tickets per person, if only to prevent students from wasting time standing in line. If I had known that arriving at 12:30 p.m. for the 1:00 p.m. sale and being 50th in line wasn’t going to yield a single ticket, I would have saved my hour and a half.

SG messed this up in multiple ways. Besides not limiting tickets per person, it waited until the last minute to announce its plans. Though the matter was discussed all summer, SG gave minimal notice to students, while members of SG could start planning their mass ticket purchases.

To make matters worse, on Monday I was told by a ticket sales supervisor to check the SG Web site for “the latest information.”

As of Tuesday morning, the latest headline on the SG site was from Monday, declaring the tickets were sold out. Tuesday’s Oracle, on the other hand, printed a story that announced additional ticket sales.

That means the decision had been made, the Oracle notified and a story written all by press time (Monday night), yet the SG Web site – which students were told to check – contained outdated information.

SG, as usual, messes something up, and the greedy Greeks were there to take advantage. And people wonder why there is resentment toward these groups?

Brian Johnson is a junior majoring in accounting.