Tell the Band director he needs to cut down on pep band members (and former band members)who get to attend games, they don’t need to have all the space they have. Pep bands are usually small and given to people who do the band proud and not be there just to make more noise (and act the why they did when they were coming back from last years womens’ Big Ten Game i.e. drunk and causing trouble on the bus on the way home!!!). That will free up alot of room and students can have those spaces!

I like how the ASM chose the biggest game of the year to bring up the amount of seats for students. If the Kohl Center held 50,000 people the game would have still sold out.

I didn’t hear anybody complaining about seats when Wisconsin was playing UW-Parkside or Western Carolina.

Too small? The Kohl Center is one of the largest venues in the NCAA!!!!

To the first commentor complaining about the band, you need to get your facts straight and think things through before speaking out. Alumni band members are only allowed to play at games during winter break when a lot of current members are away. So only cuurent band students were at the game against Illinois.

Secondly, aren’t band members also UW students? So what you’re saying is they should take away seats from students to give to other students. That makes a lot of sense.

And thirdly, isn’t the whole purpose of being in the student section to make noise, be loud and have the team feed off that energy? If you’re there to be quiet and clap softly then you’re just taking up space.

No, the first guy is right, the band takes up too much prime seating space and outside of big games and Big Ten games they rarely use all the seats set aside for them. Not to mention most music pumped in through the speakers is better and less obnoxious.

To the second guy, yes people were complaining before and during the Western Carolina game. Over 1,500 students didn’t get tickets in the first place. They were complaining in October……..

Overall it is stupid, more students want to come to the games than actually come. Meanwhile the old farts on the sides are checking out with 4:00 left in the game.

I see the side of the UW though, they have their hands tied. They have basically had to turned sports into an elitist institution because Title IX. They can’t fund all these sports not making money without charging seat premiums and raising ticket costs for the big three (Football, Basketball and Hockey).

“I like how the ASM chose the biggest game of the year to bring up the amount of seats for students. If the Kohl Center held 50,000 people the game would have still sold out.”

Isn’t that kind of the point? As the primary consumers of the university, students deserve not to be frozen out of the best games.

How quickly some people forget that it was thousands of us who spent years paying segregated fee surcharges to bail the athletic department out of debt. 3L

1) The band seats remain half or more empty for many games and only fill up for “the good games”. I’ve sat by the band for several yers now and I have seen it first hand. I think they should be in level two thereby allowing the hard core fans more prime space but I think Leckrone would never stand for it since he loves the attention. Not to mention the band could really stand to learn some additional songs instead of the same lame-ass stuff from the 70’s. How many times can you play “If you want to be a Badger” during one game??

2) I thik someone on that Badgermaniac website did some research involving the student section to total capacity ratio at the other Big ten schools and posted it. UW’s is one of the lowest.

3) UW puts boosters ahead of students as much as possible when it comes to prime seating. Watch other NCAA hoops games and see where their students are compared to ours. I remember going to MN for the Sweet 16 game against Kentucky and the student got the very worst seats, stuck up in some corner like an afterthought. The other schools put their student down in the front.

4) Yes, student fees helped keep the athletic department going for a lot of years. For a LONG time before Barry they were lucky to get Camp Randall half filled for the majority of the games.

5) Our student seciton is decent but not very organized. Whoever is in charge has no imagination and takes no initiative whatsoever but I bet they automatically got some good seats.

6) Apparently there were 500 signatures in favors of expanding the student section. Ummm, that’s really LAME considering we have 2100 in the student section and over 40,000 at the UW. Whoever planned that needs to be a LOT better at getting the word out.

7) If you want more seating just have “The Front Row” girls go around asking boosters to give up their seats. Apparently that is really all the horny old guys look for from us anyway. Just read that Badgermaniac website and watch these guys fall all over each other trying to impress them. Whatever.

LOL, Yea the “Front Row Girls”….. They are Hot! (ugghhh)

Well, wah, wah, wah, cry me a river. So some students are upset because they’re flyers/signs were taken away? Oh no, the horror!

Maybe if students were more concerned with, oh, I don’t know, let’s say cuts to the university’s budget, decline in academic quality, and most of all, rising tuition, I might actually have some respect for the students on the UW-Madison campus. I think they’ve officially “jumped the shark” with this story, however.

(“Jumped the shark” = gone over the top and on the downward slide toward a really bad quality, just so you know).

If you want a bigger student section, fine. But don’t come crying back when ticket prices go up to cover the difference from what the boosters pay for their seats that you’re willing to take away from them. If you ask me, the other person had it right; we should be complaining about the ever increasing costs of tuition and not the size of our student section.

I love how the boosters start showing up with their anti-student whining as soon as they think their precious seats are in danger. Students are the whole reason why you are able to base your social life entirely around UW athletics. Stand up old people!

Regarding the idiotic “jump the shark” post. UW students are smart enough to: -be accepted to UW -know the difference between “they’re” and “their” (unlike you) -be able to multitask and care about more than one issue at a time.

You seem to think that this is the only issue students care about. How truly dumb! Yes, we care about tuition and the quality of our education but that doesn’t mean we aren’t allowed to care about smaller issues too.

The last time I checked, this was a student newspaper; of course it’s going to take the student perspective.

Go back to your Badgermaniac message board.

Regarding the above comment, I think the poster may have missed my point, or possibly the main point of the article, or both. Obviously, some students do care about this issue, as they have an interest in sports at UW-Madison.

The article, however, is reporting on the disrupted distribution of flyers(yes, flyers is the preferred spelling for printed handouts)by students at the Kohl Center during the game. It then segues into a discussion of the size of the student section at the Kohl Center for a few paragraphs, briefly mentions ‘the next plan of action for ASM’, before finishing with commentary on what an ASM member said about student response to this issue had been.

Now then, you took my comments and totally twisted them to say

‘Yes, we care about tuition and the quality of our education but that doesn’t mean we aren’t allowed to care about smaller issues too.’

Well, I never commented on the issue of the size of the student section, and I never said people couldn’t or shouldn’t be allowed to care about smaller issues than tuition, academic quality, etc. I was merely commenting on the main point of the article, which was the removal of the ASM flyers. Hence, my ‘wah wah cry me a river’ comment. The reason I said this is that this article was the headline on the front page, with the title ‘Security spoils demonstration.’ In my opinion, it was a rather bad choice for a top article. I’m not belittling the issue of the size of the student section, I’m sure it is important to some people. What I was mocking was the importance given(by the students working at this publication) to yet another attempt by ASM to do something, and their(ooh, I got the right one this time!) response to what happened(the flyer removal), at least when compared to other articles that could have been printed(on one of the subjects I listed). I wasn’t mocking the importance of the issue of the size of the student section, even if it is something to which I’m not particulary attuned to.

So you think that’s dumb? Fair enough, but I think the same of your post, in which you assume quite a few things about who I am and what I am or am not capable of doing. I am a UW-Madison student. I can multitask with the best of them, I assure you, as I work a part time job, do research, take courses, train for marathons, do volunteer work, and compose my own music for the guitar. So I have to do a few of these at the same time, you see. :)

Oh, yes, and assumptions can get you into trouble, dear. ;) I don’t know if you were referring to me, but I’ve never heard of or been to the Badgermaniac message board. You’re probably right about the “jump the shark” reference, my pathetic attempt to be funny, sorry.

Oh yes, and kudos to you on the proper usage/grammar triumph, I admit you are the better of me in that area, your trophy is in the mail as we speak. ;) I’ll just have to console myself on having the superior analytical and critical thinking skills, I guess. Still, good luck with whatever issues you care to take up here at UW-Madison.

This is a dumb article. Nothing ASM ever does should ever warrant coverage, because they are worthless.