Although students were offered discounted presale tickets for the One World Concert on Friday, the number of tickets available — 5,000 —was too low.

To put the number of tickets in perspective, 8,500 tickets were available for Sunday’s Juice Jam, which sold out and was the largest Juice Jam concert to date. Last spring, 12,000 tickets were available for Block Party. Those events are run by University Union.

The One World Concert features more artists than most concerts at Syracuse University, and the Dalai Lama will speak, as well. A total of 30,000 tickets are available for the event, and though students can purchase tickets in the general sale, more tickets should have been made available to just students.

The 5,000 discounted tickets sold out in less than 90 minutes on Friday. On Saturday, university officials made more tickets available for student purchase, but they were no longer at the student-discount price and were also available to alumni, faculty, staff and athletics donors.

Regardless, students who really want to see the Dalai Lama will most likely spend the extra money and make the effort to purchase tickets. But the university should have worked harder to open this opportunity to students.

While there were not enough tickets made available for solely students, the move to limit students to purchase one ticket only during the presale was a positive. The tickets were loaded directly onto the students’ SUIDs, the same way season tickets are placed on IDs for football and men’s basketball games.

Taking this step will cut down on the number of tickets scalped and allow more students to enjoy the event. No one student can buy multiple tickets and prevent others from purchasing one.

The one-ticket limit is good for students, but university officials should have done more to extend the opportunity to attend such a landmark event to more students. The brisk timeframe in which the discounted tickets sold out indicates this, as well.

Published on September 10, 2012 at 1:10 am

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