Making students pay to attend football games bad decision
USC officials are quietly floating around the idea to charge for student tickets next year.
We will take this space to vociferously bat down said idea with a ferociousness we normally save for large sums of inordinate spending from the administration. Officials shouldn’t even put the idea up for further consideration. It absolutely reeks.
Officials say Vanderbilt is the only other SEC school to not charge for student tickets. That’s all well and good, and from a quick review ourselves, that seems to be true.
But students here are already bilked out of enough money. Consider: USC’s in-state tuition is the highest in the SEC, apart from private Vanderbilt. That’s not a fact you see promoted in all the frilly Carolina’s Promise campaign materials, and we’re betting you won’t see it happily tweeted out from the University’s account. For an in-state student, that’s more than $10,000 a year in tuition alone. Tack on housing, books, food and more fees, and you’re looking at almost double that.
Squeezing more money out of students and their families — many of whom are already strapped for cash — is not OK. How much more can you ask people to pay? And by charging for tickets, you create a discrepancy between the haves and the have-nots that need not exist.
And students here already pay in the hundreds each year to support the athletics program and its missions. Student fees have helped construct several new pristine facilities, which we are incredibly proud of. Activity fees help cover the cost of student tickets. How much more do you want, USC?
What will be doubly embarrassing? Charging students for tickets and then having an empty student section for games like the one against The Citadel. How many people would pay money to attend a game like that?