Titus Ticket Craze Brings Excessive Lines
This week, the tickets for the ever-anticipated Titus weekend went on sale. This is the 11th consecutive year of the event, and the demand for tickets has never seemed higher.
Last year, Tickets sold out on Tuesday, only the second morning of sales. To combat the possibility of that happening again, only 175 tickets were sold each day, Monday through Friday, this week, starting at 12:15.
However, with the limited number of tickets per day, the stakes were raised for students hoping to get their spot on the bus to Party Mountain.
As a result, students began lining up in the Student Center hours before sales went live, some rumors reporting students camping out before 6 a.m.
Maia Carpenter ’22, said she got to the line around before 8 in the morning on Wednesday, and still wasn’t able to get one of the 175 coveted tickets for the day. “[her friend] Robyn and I got there at 7:45 and rushed over once people…told us there was a line by 6:30, we waited for 5 hours, and then last minute everyone got all mixed up, even though the OC tried their best to keep it organized,” says Carpenter.
The long wait for a disappointing result may be caused by a number of factors.
For one, students are allowed to buy a maximum of two tickets, so while 175 are available each day, the line could ostensibly be cut off after 88 people.
Due to the excessively early lines, Student Life and the OC worked together to attempt a different, more efficient system. John Robert O’Connor, Assistant Dean of Student Life, sent an email on Wednesday evening, announcing a new ticket-selling system, in which the location of ticket sales will only be announced 15 minutes before opening.
In anticipation for the mad dash to said undisclosed location, Delaney Smith ’22 remarks, “it’s like the Hunger Games!” The competition also breeded a perfect environment for a little student entrepreneurship.
On multiple class-wide Facebook groups, students posted their services for hire to wait in line as a proxy or even run to the surprise location first.
Anticipating chaos, O’Connor stressed in his email that “we do ask you to be mindful of safety when making your way to the ticket sales location tomorrow and be respectful of your fellow Laurentians.”
But students are looking for change. “It’s crazy to see people take advantage of the OC and Titus itself, which makes something that’s supposed to be one of the best events of the year just that much more stressful for the OC,” says Carpenter.