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friday, april 20, 1 973
lincoln, nebraskan vol. 96, no. 1 03
Devaney tackles ticket proposal
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photo by Gail Folda
Devaney..."all of the Big Eight schools are
satisfied with a no-transfer policy.
"We're living in a world of fringe benefits," UNL
Ticket Manager James Pittenger said Thursday.
However, permitting students to transfer UNL
athletic tickets apparently should not be included in
those benefits.
Addressing the Council on Student Life (CSL),
UNL Athletic Director Bob Devaney and Pittenger
said they do not support a CSL report, adopted by
the Council in January, which would allow students
to transfer athletic tickets.
"We feel that students have a right to attend UNL
football games," Pittenger said, "but when they get a
choice of seats and two-thirds off the ticket price,
that right becomes a privilege. With privileges come
responsibilities. That includes not giving tickets to
friends or making money by scalping."
The CSL report proposes that the words "not
transferable" be removed from University athletic
tickets and also recommends that students and
faculty continue to receive special rates on athletic
tickets.
Other recommendations made by CSL include
allocating 20 per cent of tickets for away games to
students and 50 per cent of migration game tickets to
students.
According to Devaney, the policy of not allowing
the transfer of athletic tickets is "both a matter of
administration and of principle."
Only three or four universities in the nation have a
real problem with the supply and demand of athletic
tickets, Devaney said. "Even so, all of the Big Eight
schools are satisfied with a no-transfer policy. It
seems like they probably have tried transferable
tickets and have gone back to this policy."
During the 1 972 UNL football season, 1 25 student
tickets were confiscated, Pittenger said. All but 29 of
the tickets were returned to the owners.
Faculty members, who also receive tickets at
special rates, are not checked for ticket transferals.
According to Devaney, faculty members' wives
and children also receive discount rates on tickets. It
would be difficult to check faculty families for
transfered tickets because wives and children are not
issued identification cards, he added.
Asked if the Ticket Office would support a plan to
offer students the option of buying tickets at regular
prices and transfering them, Pittenger said, "We're
trying to fulfill the desire of students to see the
game."
"This may sound a little bit corny, but at our
football games, I'd like to see our student body
there," Devaney added.
However, the percentage of tickets allocated to
students for migration games is lower than demanded
because "we're trying to run an athletic program
here," Devaney said.
"We need to take care of the people who
contribute to our department because we're a
self-supporting unit. Those contributors keep
students from having to pay an athletic fee."
In other business, Union Board President Mary
Cannon told CSL that the Board is still studying
several plans for charging a check cashing fee at the
Union.
Ticket
trials
tire
Tribunal
by Adella Wacker
Some UNL student tribunal members rather would not
have to listen to student complaints about having football
tickets confiscated during the season.
Whenever stadium gate keepers discover a ticket being used
by another person, or being sold, the NU ticket office says it
has the right to pick up the ticket.
The student can appeal the loss of the ticket to the student
tribunal through the UNL Office of Student Affairs. Both
students and faculty sit on the tribunal, a disciplinary advisory
board.
"It's trivial" for the tribunal to be concerned with football
tickets, said member Joan Conway.
Ron Gierhan, discipline officer in Student Affairs, said the
tribunal seems to feel that a football ticket appeal isn't a
critical issue compared to other things like dormitory theft.
But faculty tribunal member Margaret Penney said, "As
long as it's a University rule, the tribunal has a responsibility
to meet and act on this kind of thing." Other members agreed.
After hearing a case last fall, the tribunal "recommended
very strongly" a change in the ticket policy, Gierhan said.
Members' estimates of how many cases the tribunal heard
last fall ranged from one to six cases.
Gierhan said another six to 12 students came to ask him
about the appeal procedure but didn't follow through.
Ombudsman Jim Suter estimated 20 persons came to him
last fall after their tickets were confiscated.
Ticket office manager Jim Pittenger said between 200 and
300 student tickets were taken up last year, and many were
returned. Over 19,000 students bought football tickets last
season.
According to Suter, the ticket office can enforce its current
policy and confiscate tickets because the tickets are stamped
non-transferable.
He said there's an informal agreement at the ticket office
that if the ticket was confiscated after being loaned to a
member of the student's family, it will be returned.
Whether or not he helps a student get his ticket back
depends on what he did with it, Suter said.
He said he does not feel students have a right to make
money by selling their football tickets. However, he said he
believes once a student buys a ticket, he should be able to let
anyone take his seat in the stadium.
Senators pass budget, adjourn for vacation
by Steve Arvanette
State senators passed and sent to Gov. J.
James Exon without a vote to spare the
1973-74 fiscal budget and later decided to go
home for an 11-day vacation.
Exon's unamended $227.8 million general
fund budget needed 33 affirmative votes to go
into effect July 1. When the vote appeared one
short, 32-16, Sen, Harold Simpson of Lincoln
announced he was changing his vote from "no"
to "yes" in order to keep the state from lapsing
into financial chaos.
Had the bill not been passed with 33 votes
and the emergency clause, it would not have
gone into effect until 90 days after the
Legislature adjourns-sometime in late August.
Prior to final reading of the bill, which took
nearly 30 minutes, a series of amendments was
soundly rejected.
Easily turned back were amendments which
Exon said were necessary additions. Also easily
defeated was Omaha Sen. Ernest Chambers'
motion to kill the bill.
In a closer vote, senators turned back 18 24
a plea from Sen. Shirley Marsh of Lincoln to
add the Appropriation Committee's
amendments to the budget bill.
More than three months of work by the
committee on amendments to the bill was
rejected "Monday with the full approval of
Budget Chairman Sen. Richard Marvel of
Hastings.
In an extraordinary address to the
Unicameral Monday, Exon hold out the
possibility of lowering the state sales tax if
senators resisted the utge to add funds to his
budget proposal.
Senators agreed Tuesday to consider all bills
which have no fiscal impact, until the 90 day
session is completed. All bills calling for the
expenditure of state funds would be postponed
until next year.
Perhaps the major area hit by the money
freeze is the state capital construction budget.
Although not finally approved, the University
appeared in lint; for a possible $10.2 million in
construction funds.
The Appropriations Committee was just
putting the finishing touches on the state's
capital construction budget before the decision
was made to freeze further expenditures. All
that remained was a decision on whether UNO
should receive a new library.
It appeared before Monday's decision that
the committee would recommend S7.76 million
in construction funds for UNL.
The largest chunk of that money-$4.2
mill ion - would be for the construction of a
smaller-thanrequested new life science
building.
The long requested new building for the Law
College will also have to wait for another year.
The committee had appeared ready to go along
with the full $3.1 million request for the new
structure.
For the UNO campus, the Board of Regents
had requested $5.9 million to construct a new
library. Exon had recommended against such a
structure at this time.
The Legislature's fiscal staff had
recommended to the committee that a smaller
$5 million librar y be built.
11 V
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photo I'V Toil Kirk
Norman Otto, administrative assistant to Gov.
E x on .. .Thursday defended Exon's budget
recommendations when visited by a group of UNL
students.
