I’ve had season tickets since 1994. The student section is no different now that it was in 1995-2000. We have nearly always had cupcake teams for our non-conference schedule. That’s not exactly great motivation to arrive early and stay well into a blowout on a hot day. Not to mention the fifth quarter has been the same exact thing for like 20+ years. Why stay for that after you’ve been through as few?

Go Cougars! Grrrrrrrr

Every year we have an editorial like this and every year we need one.

Step it up, kids.

Thanks for your comments Mat. You should direct your questions about the empty student section to the Athletic Department because they held us all captive underneath the stands and had us ushered to our seats one by one by police officers from Waunakee and Belleville. We entered the stadium at 10:45 but did not make it to our seats in section P until after 10:15… Other students waited MUCH longer (until well into the second quarter or approx 11:45). Yes, pre-game drinking happens and students show up late, but we should not have to arrive 90 minutes prior to kick-off and wave at the thousands of UW Alums drinking at their tailgates on the way to the game.

Dear Badger Herald I was surprised to see that you chose to publish Keith Glaser’s letter in today’s Badger Herald. While I absolutely agree with the premise that students should arrive on time for games, I was incredibly the surprised that the Badger Herald apparently did no research at all on what occurred at the Marshall game before publishing more “Bash the Student Section letters”.

Despite being inside of Camp Randall stadium more than 20 minutes before kickoff was scheduled to start, I was not allowed to actually observe the kickoff. Instead, I along with thousands of others was crammed in the hallway while each student was individually assigned a seat by Camp Randall security. A police officer would actually grabbed each student’s waist from behind and yell out a number. Besides the basic point that assigning seats runs utterly contrary to the idea of wristbands rather than tickets, there wasn’t even close to enough staff to seat all the students who wanted to get into the game. If you noticed, the only sections that were even open at the start were P and O, because when you have to have someone give thousands of students an individual seat, it takes a lot of time. Why did we get rid of tickets again? One of the officers commented to me that she thought that this policy was as stupid as we did.

Additionally, the hallways were so packed full that many people became separated from the people they arrived with and I saw multiple people told they had to stay where the security had placed them even though their friends were seated a row or two away. I myself saw some friends 4 or 5 rows up, but we were not allowed to sit together despite at the time there being about 7 empty rows of bleachers between us.

I would strongly encourage the Badger Herald to look deeper next time rather than falling into the trap of assuming laziness and drunkenness on the part of the student section. I’m not sure how full the student section would have been at kickoff had the UW better thought out this seating policy, but I do know that thousands of students were pretty upset standing smashed together in the foyers while the game was getting well underway. Hopefully this policy will be rethought, otherwise students better plan on arriving an hour early or more. How crowded is the rest of the stadium then?

David Mark UW Alum ‘08 Biochemistry & Economics Lucky enough to get tickets from a friend

Right on! Let’s all here it for first come, first serve tickets for every game, none of this lottery crap, and even no worries about getting season tickets, you just have to get to Camp Randall on game day.

Right on! Let’s all here it for first come, first serve tickets for every game, none of this lottery crap, and even no worries about getting season tickets, you just have to get to Camp Randall on game day.