Ticket issue sparks debate for Tercentennial

ELIZABETH ARCHIBALD/YH On Thurs., Apr. 19, Claes Oldenburg's 'Lipstick on Caterpillar Tracks' was moved to the sculpture garden at the Yale Art Gallery for Tercentennial celebrations.

This weekend, only a few days after some of Yale's newest students—pre-frosh in the Class of 2005—arrived for Bulldog Days, many of the University's most illustrious alumni will gather at Yale for a special Tercentennial celebration entitled "300 Years of Creativity and Discovery." This weekend's Alumni Convocation will include speeches and panels featuring former President George H. W. Bush, DC '48, former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, LAW '64, cartoonist Garry Trudeau TD '70, writer Tom Wolfe, GRD '57, and Proctor & Gamble CEO John Pepper, BK '50.

But the recent campus buzz about this weekend's events has centered not on the events themselves, or even the notable absence of former President Bill Clinton, LAW '73, but on whether or not current students have played an adequate role in the Tercentennial celebration.

While this weekend, the second of three such celebrations to mark Yale's 300th birthday, is geared toward alumni, the Tercentennial Steering Committee allowed for a large number of tickets for every event to be made available for students. According to Director of the Tercentennial Janet Lindner, students were first notified by e-mail of the availability of tickets for the various events on Mon., Mar. 26. The e-mail instructed them to visit a website where they would be told how to fill out a request for tickets and to drop off the completed forms at 232 York St. The deadline for submitting forms was noon on Fri., Apr. 6.

Criticism has come from the Yale Daily News's (YDN) editorial page and the Council of College Presidents, who have both aired their concerns that the Administration failed to adequately publicize this weekend to students and unnecessarily limited ticket access to alumni. According to Andrew Towne, SM '04, President of the Silliman College Council, the college representatives had "heard a general voice of discouragement from the students in regards to the Tercentennial process. The students felt like they were left out." To help rectify that problem, the Council met with Lindner in mid-April.

Similar concerns were raised in a YDN editorial that ran on Thurs., Apr. 5. The Alumni Convocation "will accommodate students with a smattering of tickets to selected venues, [but the University] has done remarkably little to publicize the opportunity and to make tickets accessible," it read. Towne also emphasized that the application process was arduous and discouraging because students only entered a lottery and were thus not guaranteed a place.

Lindner and Association of Yale Alumni Executive Director Jeff Brenzel responded to the YDN editorial with a letter to the editor defending their publicity efforts. They wrote that they made it clear that "seats would be available for each and every program" for students, and that ticket availability was publicized in three issues of the YDN and by an advertisement that ran in the same issue as the editorial.

In their meeting with the Tercentennial Office, the Council of College Presidents brought up the publicity issue with Lindner, who was surprised that the students felt that the availability of tickets was not well publicized, Towne said.

Surprisingly, 2,500 student tickets were still available after the Fri., Apr. 6 deadline. Tickets remained for 21 of the 52 sessions, including sessions held by Professor Vincent Scully and Shakespeare scholar Harold Bloom. As a result, the Tercentennial Office made rush tickets available to students, faculty, and staff members on a first-come, first-serve basis on Mon., Apr. 16 and Tues., Apr. 17.

"President [Richard] Levin [GRD '74] felt strongly that, even though the upcoming convocation is geared towards alumni, Yale students, faculty, and staff should be able to attend," Lindner went on to say. "The response has been tremendous, with over 4,000 tickets distributed to the weekend events."

"In addition," she said, "Tercentennial Masters' teas for Yale students during the upcoming alumni weekend are planned."

Raaj Narayan, BK '04, was successful in securing tickets for every event for which he applied, including former President Bush's speech. "I'm pretty enthusiastic about it," he said.

Meghan Casey, BK '02, had similar success: "I applied for as many lectures as I could assuming that I'd get tickets to none. I ended up getting into all but one."

The controversy that surrounded this ticket debacle has yielded significant progress in the working relationship between the Council of College Presidents and the Tercentennial Office, Towne said.

"The meetings we've held have certainly given us an appreciation of the difficulties that the Administration has had to deal with. We understand better how they believed that they had publicized it to the students and we informed them that maybe they could have publicized even more. I think the relationship between the College of Council Presidents and tercentennial coordinators is now healthy. We will be working closely together on the final celebration."

Lindner added, "I look forward to working with them on the numerous ideas that are sure to emerge."

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