Students deserve to see 10 games

I've seen some disappointing things as an IU basketball fan. Years without a Big 10 Championship for example or the firing of former Coach Bob Knight. But picking up the paper Friday, Nov. 1, I was faced with the worst news concerning IU basketball yet. Student season ticket packages are being cut from 10 games to six or seven. Or seven? Not only do I lose the guarantee that I'll get to see senior night, or a game that could possibly determine a Big 10 champ, I'm not even guaranteed that I get seven games? This is the thanks my friends and I get for standing behind IU basketball and purchasing season tickets since our freshman year. \nI remember a time when IU students flooded Assembly Hall the first day season tickets were available for purchase. You had to live in a cave to not know tickets were on sale. The atmosphere at the ticket office was somewhat chaotic, but excitement hung in the air as we prepared for another season. Since then, the sale date hasn't been as well publicized, and the excitement of the rush is gone. But, I still turned in my order form for 10 (yes, 10) tickets on time. So when did it become my problem that some people can't meet a deadline? While the athletic department will not admit whether or not it accepted late order forms, their silence speaks volumes to me. \nI do think that it's considerate of the ticket office to want to give as many students as possible an opportunity to watch the games. So why not increase the number of student seats? Even though we allot 7,800 tickets for students, more than any other Big 10 university, this is still the students' team. The athletic department should count themselves lucky that so many of us are willing to fork over $115 for tickets that are free for other teams like the University of Maryland's NCAA champions. \nOf course, we will receive a refund in the mail for the games we'll be missing. But as any true Hoosier fan would tell you, a few extra bucks in the bank cannot replace the thrill of watching our team play live. So maybe we should take our refunds and purchase public tickets for the games we're missing out on. They would be more expensive, but we should get priority as students, right? Well, not unless you are a student who has donated at least $50 to the Varsity Club. Based on the Priority Point system for public ticket purchase, this earns you one whole point! \n If the Athletic Department is going to take away students' chances of seeing the games they were led to believe they'd get tickets for, they should at least give the highest priority for public tickets to students. Even better, in the future they should introduce a larger student section and get rid of this idiotic policy. If for some reason IU couldn't possibly offer more student tickets, why not give seniors priority for 10 games and offer freshmen six or seven? Eventually those freshmen will have the pleasure of attending 10 home games unlike this year's seniors, who will get to see fewer games than ever before. The very least the athletic department can do is be upfront with students and let them know how many tickets they are getting before they place their orders.