One thousand tickets. More than 6,500 undergraduate students. A race for the hottest ticket in town to Friday night’s men’s hockey game, featuring Quinnipiac against rival Yale.
Many Quinnipiac students spent this past Sunday evening doing exactly the same thing as so many others: Refreshing the webpage in hopes of getting a ticket to the Yale game.
Athletic ticket manager Matt Calcagni explained how those who manage the Quinnipiac athletic ticket website prepared for the influx of students trying to get tickets to the game.
“This year, we are working with our ticketing provider… they are adding servers,” Calcagni said. “For students, they are linked to the student portal. It would hit maybe one or two servers, but they have up to four servers this year [to manage the large number of students trying to get tickets].”
The number of students trying to get tickets to the Yale game has increased steadily over the past few years, as the student body at Quinnipiac has risen, according to Calcagni.
“With the Yale game itself, we do understand the size of classes are getting a little bit larger each year, and this year we do have more [tickets] available than previous years because of the demand for it,” Calcagni said.
Calcagni explained that the focus of the ticket department was making the experience for students trying to get tickets as easy and fair as possible.
“We realize that a lot of people are sitting moments before the release itself, just doing a refresh of the page,” Calcagni said. “This year, we [introduced] a CAPTCHA page, and it’s to make sure you’re not a robot… to prevent anyone who is good with algorithms to generate multiple refreshes to give them an advantage over others.”
While this year, much like previous years, saw significant traffic on the ticket portal, students who were able to secure a ticket to the game were ultimately satisfied.
“At first, the website crashed. I probably filled out about 50 CAPTCHAs, but it ended up working,” said sophomore George Rozea. best replica watches
Sophomore Nicolas Sosa felt fortunate to be able to secure a ticket to the game.
“I think [the process] went pretty well. In the beginning, [the website] didn’t load… it kept saying it was sold out when it wasn’t, but luckily I got the ticket,” Sosa said.
Sophomore Andrew O’Donnell was also able to get his hands on a ticket, despite experiencing minor issues with the website.
“The website started crashing a lot, and I wasn’t able to log in, but after about 10 minutes or so, it let me back in and the Yale ticket was available, so I was able to get it,” O’Donnell said.
For some who were able to get tickets, attending the game is not their end goal. Many students have chosen to sell their tickets to other students, in exchange for money that will be pledged to charity.
Ali Munshi, Vice President for Student Experience in the Student Government Association believes that students selling their tickets to the game is not an honorable thing to do.
“I do not know if there is a punishment for selling Yale tickets, but I believe there should be,” Munshi said. “If you are getting the tickets for free knowing that you will be unable to attend the event, denying another student the ability to obtain tickets… you are doing something unethical.”
Munshi feels that due to intense competition for the tickets, students selling the tickets are doing an injustice to those who truly wanted to attend the game.
“These tickets are tickets that most students want and it’s very unfair to those students that truly want to attend the game. If you do obtain a ticket and then find out you can’t go, giving the ticket away, without selling, is the right thing to do,” Munshi said.
www.findbestwatch.net
