The Chronicle

Issue date: 1/26/96 Section: Undefined Section
Last update: 2/1/06 at 12:15 PM EST

Heather Hayter, co-chair of the basketball ticket committee, seems committed to fairness in the process for distributing season tickets to graduate students--fairness as it pertains to those, like her, in longer graduate programs.

By removing the provision for a guaranteed ticket in a graduate student's final year, the Graduate and Professional Student Council has sent students in short programs a clear message: We don't care if you never get a season ticket. As a Fuqua student, I only get two chances to enter the lottery for tickets because I'm only here for two years. My chances of being picked, as given by GPSC, are one in three. So, for my entire stint here at Duke, I have a 1/3 + 1/3 = 2/3 chance of getting one season ticket. It's likely that I'll be passed over--in fact, 1/3 of two-year graduate students will be, statistically speaking.

Now, let's look at the four-year graduate student. This person has a 1/3 + 1/3 + 1/3 + 1/3 = 4/3 chance of getting at least one year's ticket. Hmmm... statistically guaranteed. Maybe this is why Hayter and others at GPSC saw no need for the guarantee provision. I am outraged by this "fairness" policy. I'm already at a disadvantage for overall Cameron attendance; in the best case scenario, I could only see two seasons of play, whereas, four-year students can theoretically attend twice as many games. Every year is a crap-shoot for the entire graduate school student body--that is agreed. But this short-sighted year-by-year policy ignores the larger picture. Shorter-term Duke students have fewer chances to enjoy the experience of Cameron Indoor Stadium; and one-third of us will be left out entirely without the final-year guarantee, the only true fairness measure.

Jason Pratt

Fuqua '97

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