For the Oct. 11 home football game agsinst Gardner Webb, the Student Government Association has decided to start scanning BuzzCards for students in order to verify that people using student tickets are current students of the Institution.
“Over the past few years we have had ticket demand issues at the football games. As a way to try to satisfy some of that demand, we want to make sure only students, who pay the Student Athletic fee get into the football games,” said Robert McEntyre, SGA vice president of Campus Affairs.
There have been many concerns that a single BuzzCard would be used several times for one game so that non-students could enter games using a student ticket. Under the new system, once a BuzzCard has been scanned, no other person can use that card to get into the game.
“A value of one will basically be attached to each BuzzCard. Once that card is scanned, that value will be removed and it cannot be used again for that game,” McEntyre said.
“We have about 19,000 students at Tech and only about 8,500 tickets guaranteed for each game, so we think it is important to try to maintain the integrity of student tickets by trying to keep them in student hands,” said Nick Welkamp, undergraduate student body president.
The system will not go into effect until the Gardner Webb game, so students will not have their BuzzCards scanned at the Duke game. Students still need their cards as normal for verification at the gate.
“We are piloting the new system at the Gardner Webb game because we are expecting it to be a smaller game. There will be two weeks between the Gardner Webb and Virginia, so we will have time to gather feedback from the student body about the new system to determine if it will be implemented for the remainder of the season,” Welkamp said.