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ID crackdown frees up 4,000
OSU tickets
Thursday, September 02, 2004
Kathy Lynn Gray
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
More than 4,000 additional football tickets will be available for alumni, and possibly the general public, this season because of an Ohio State University crackdown on the use of student tickets.
Starting with Saturday’s home opener, students will have to show their
OSU identification to use a student ticket — a decision that means anyone else with a student ticket will be turned away.
Enforcement of the ID rule also means students can’t pick up extra cash by selling tickets they get cheap: $27 per seat instead of the $57 the public pays. Nor can they give their tickets to Mom, Dad or their nonstudent friends.
In response, more than 1,000 students have returned their season passes, which were good for the last four home games.
Refunds are available this year because many students hadn’t heard that the long-ignored ID rule would be enforced, said Richelle Simonson, associate athletic director.
"We felt we needed to be a little more flexible," Simonson said. "Lord knows we have enough other people who want these tickets."
Simonson said returned tickets will be offered to alumni first, then to the general public.
The policy affects student tickets for every home game. That includes the first two — Saturday and Sept. 11.
Simonson said students can get a refund from the university for those tickets.
The university, however, will not reimburse nonstudents who are denied entry into the stadium because they have student tickets, Simonson said.
Plenty were on sale on eBay yesterday, including a number with descriptions stating that student IDs have not been checked in the past few years.
Simonson said selling student tickets for anything other than face value is a violation of the
OSU student code, as is selling them with the knowledge that an ID is needed. She said Columbus police are investigating some offers on eBay.
Plenty of people are unhappy about the ID rule, Simonson said.
"I’ve gotten a lot of phone calls, e-mails and angry letters," she said. Members of the public who bought student tickets and now can’t use them have little recourse, she said.
Enforcement was necessary to keep tickets available to every student who wants them, she said. Because stadium space is limited, the school typically sets aside 25,000 student season passes.
This year, 29,000 students bought the passes, and the university faced a decision: Either restrict ticket sales to students in some way or require ID on game day to cut down on the number of nonstudents using tickets.
Students get a little wiggle room.
For season-ticket games, they can exchange a student ticket for a regular ticket if they pay the $30 price difference plus a service charge, which probably will be $10 per ticket, Simonson said. That’s so students who bought a season pass and find they can’t use one or more tickets aren’t penalized, she said.
Those using upgraded tickets won’t need a student ID to enter the stadium, and thus, those tickets could be sold to the general public. That is not, however, the intent of the upgrades, Simonson said.
"We’re hoping we don’t see a bunch of tickets go up for sale on eBay; that’ll cause us to rethink the upgrades," she said.
No ticket upgrades are allowed for Saturday’s game against the University of Cincinnati or the Sept. 11 game, Simonson said, because the tickets were sold late enough that students should have known whether they could attend the game.
For any game, a student can sell a ticket to another
OSU student, who then could use his or her ID to get into the stadium.
Next year, faculty and staff members also will need to show identification to use their tickets. They buy tickets for $46 each, an $11-a-ticket discount.
Simonson said concerns that ID checks will slow entrance into the stadium may not materialize. Students can enter through any gate and twice as many people will work the gates to keep lines from forming.
kgray@dispatch.com