LooseSuits

I'd be interested to know why the policy change happened in the first place.

I think we're getting into a dangerous age, first displayed on Digg, and now a major college campus of people banding together to say, "we don't like that" without having a clear idea of why.

I'm sure that some people did, but most probably just said, Hey, my friends all say this is bad, so I think this is bad too!"

Is this good grass roots democracy or the beginnings of a mob rule?

It's the beginning of mob rule. Next thing you know, out presidential election will be decided by whose Facebook groups is bigger.

On the one hand, it's nice to see a college actually paying attention to it's students for a change.

On the other hand, I wouldn't want most decisions being made by mobs of most college students.

Well, to answer Peroty, the policy change happened because Penn State has about 100,000 students in its campuses across the state. All of these students compete for the 22,000 student football tickets that the university gives out. It has always been "first come, first serve", but last year the scalping prices were through the roof, errors occurred with mailing the ticket purchase information, and other unfair occurences that prevented people from buying tickets. The university thought that changing to a random lottery for tickets would solve the problem.

So, we had a decision that would have potentially benefitted 80,000 other people. I wonder how many total people "e-protested" the change.

Yes, I know not all 80,000 were wanting tickets. But there's plenty of people out there who might not have never been to a game and would like to attend one. Live games are fun but not worth the exorbitant ticket prices.

I this there needs to be a balance between schools listening to their student (and in reality, their customers) and working to look at the whole picture, and not just cave to the first "small" interest group to come along.

I have a feeling there's going to be some really interesting times ahead and we're on a slippery slope.

Student's POV- The people who want tickets will hop on the website when the purchasing opens up. It is still an equally fair opportunity to everyone, assuming their internet is working that day, and the school notifies everyone properly.

School's POV- The lottery system was used for the bowl game in Florida this year, and it went fairly. It also makes the school less error-prone.

My POV- The tickets that were given out in the lottery were sold for hundreds of dollars more than originally cost because people enterred the lottery for the sole purpose of scalping tickets. Also, only 40,000 of those 100,000 students are on the campus where the games are played, and many of the campuses are 2 to 3 hours away which is a difficult trip for college students, most of whom don't have cars anyway. Those students are able to get tickets just like everyone else, it just makes those who want them work for them a little bit.