On May 6, the class of 2011 will graduate in the TD Garden. Each student is given four tickets to divide between family members, and inevitably, some kin are left out. This number dropped from five tickets per student last year.
Unfortunately (or fortunately) depending on how you look at it the graduating class is always large, and students aren’t able to extend the invitation to their mother’s cousin’s boyfriend. But, perhaps Northeastern administration should tweak the way the ticketing system works.
It makes sense that a line needs to be drawn. There is not enough space in the venue to accommodate each and every guest a student wants to bring. But some students don’t use all of their tickets, and some students have a very large immediate family – leaving brothers and sisters to be left out and chosen between.
Everyone automatically gets all four tickets, even if they don’t need them. It leaves the students to scramble for, or decide what to do with them. And the way spare tickets are distributed is not exactly fair.There will be a distribution of any extra tickets on a first come, first serve basis April 19. But not every student has the time to attend, there is no guarantee you will receive a ticket, and there is no “call-ahead” reserving of tickets. Not to mention, tickets for Northeastern commencement are posted on Craigslist – for $50 to $70.
Of course, some students do a nice thing by simply giving their unwanted tickets to friends who need them for other family members. But clearly, Craigslist demonstrates this isn’t always the case.
Members of the administration could change this. They can still cap tickets at four per person initially, but ask in advance how many tickets each student needs. And students who need tickets could add their names to a list, and when extra tickets become available, they can be distributed to those students.
Not every student is going to be honest, but hopefully the number of students who are will outweigh those that aren’t. Of course, there will still be problems and not all students will get the amount of tickets they want, but at least this way students aren’t forced to pay $70 just so that their grandparents can watch them receive their diploma.
Graduation from college is a very special time in a person’s life, and they deserve to have the people that are important to them there. Space is limited. Northeastern is a big school, and that’s a price we pay for going to such a great and diverse institution. But if the Northeastern administration can aid in this process by tweaking the system a little bit, they definitely should.
