By Catherine Laroche

Last Friday, several hundreds of U of L students made it to the mandatory spring football game attendance to pay $220 for their 2009-2010 men’s basketball and/or football season tickets.
For the last few years, paying for tickets at the spring football game has been the most efficient option for SGA to collect the money.
“With the construction taking place at the football field and the number of students participating in the lottery, we were very pleased to get all 1500 students through the process in under two hours,” Trevor Joelson, SGA student athletic director, said.
However, many students that participated in the lottery weren’t pleased with the required Spring Game attendance.
“I think it’s ridiculous that they force students to go to an irrelevant football game in order to pay for season tickets,” Jeff Lamb, sophomore political science major, said.
Students headed to gate No. 4 to pick up their voucher during half-time. After the game, students had to take their voucher to gate No. 7 to pay for their season tickets.
Senior electrical engineering student Mary Soltys spent most of the game outside of the stadium going from one ticket booth to the other.
“It defeats the point of coming to the game if you have to stand in line the whole time,” she said.
Many students were unhappy with the lack of organization when getting their voucher and paying for their tickets, and suggested an online process or at least spacing out the payment lines.
“It’s pretty convoluted,” Robert Caprara, senior mechanical engineering major, said. “By the time you’re done with the voucher line, you have to go to the other line, and then the game is over. They could space out the teams. The mob doesn’t work very well.”
Joelson said that SGA tried to change the way students pay for tickets.
“We made efforts to move the process online, but it wasn’t feasible,” Joelson said. “We use the Spring Game because of the ticketing booths available at Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium and the tradition of using that event for the past three years.”
Not all students were upset with the changes that SGA made.
“Overall, the lottery process was better than last year,” Kerry Griesinger, junior accounting major, said. “I liked the fact that Trevor sent emails out to keep everyone up to date, especially since I was on co-op and wasn’t on campus a lot.”
However, she wasn’t too happy with the outcome of the actual lottery.
“My team is made up of all seniors, yet we got drawn No. 54 out of 61 teams,” she said. “I’m furious because I will be a senior and have supported the Cards for three years and should have seats closer to the court.  I think the tickets should be dispersed by seniority, as long as you have gotten season tickets in the past.  That way, you get rewarded with decent seats for being a fan of the Cardinals.”
Proving Griesinger’s point, Lamb’s team drew No. 24.
“The group I signed up with didn’t go to any of the extra event, meaning we only added six chips to our team’s total of chips,” Lamb said. “I am very pleased with my draw considering we only contributed six chips.”
The top five teams drawn were: Speed School, Kappa Delta, Independent, Tau Kappa Epsilon, and Pike.