C'mon, take the money

By Joshua D Scroggin

Charitable students can try to give money to the cash-strapped athletic department—but the ticket vendors will be proud to give it right back.

That’s what senior liberal studies major Stacey Visscher said happened when she tried to pay to get into a wrestling match in the North Gym. She said the ticket vendor refused to take her money.

Why is an athletic department that just cut two sports for budget reasons refusing paying customers? Nobody knows.

“ I’ve never heard such a bizarre story in my life,” Fresno State wrestling coach Dennis DeLiddo said. “I just work here. I don’t know what they’re thinking.”

It’s too bad they cancelled Unsolved Mysteries.

Students normally get into sporting events in the North Gym for free—a good deal—but Visscher actually wanted to pay.

“ The sports are suffering so much right now,” Visscher said, “you try to help them out, and they turn you down.”

She came to the match with her parents, who had tickets in the red-seated chairs on the east side of the gym. The free student seats are in the general admission bleachers on the west side.

Visscher said her dad was willing to pay the $10 price for her and $10 more for her boyfriend to sit in the red seats next to her parents, but the ticket vendor had a surprise for her.

“ She said they were sold out of them,” Visscher said.

Visscher received another surprise when she checked the gym and found the red seats empty enough to accommodate both her and her boyfriend—and dozens of their closest friends.

She said she went back out to the ticket booth to ask about red-seat tickets again, and that’s when all logic and reason escaped into the Twilight Zone.

“ She said, ‘Oh no, there are plenty of seats available, but there just aren’t the tickets,’” Visscher said.

Visscher couldn’t buy tickets to sit in the red seats because…?

She said it was because not enough of the tickets had been brought to the satellite booth from the ticket office.

So what?

Isn’t this the same athletic department that cut the school’s only Pac-10 team from its budget? Is it the same department that cites fiscal concerns as reasons for keeping the volleyball team out of the Save Mart Center? Isn’t the athletic department in trouble?

“ I guess we’ve got a lot of money in athletics,” DeLiddo said. “I thought we were starving.”

I can see your ribs, coach.

Unfortunately, the generous students who want to contribute to the help-wrestling-live-through-next-year fund, are being turned away. DeLiddo would be lucky if Visscher was the only one.

And it’s not as if she didn’t sit in the red seats anyway.

“ At the time, we were upset about it because we’re sitting on the opposite side of the gym,” Visscher said about watching her parents sitting nice and cozy in the red seats. “We snuck over there and sat there anyway.”

So, Visscher wasn’t allowed to buy the $10 tickets, even though she was not only willing but wanted to pay, and she just sat there anyway?

Nice one, ticket vendor. You’re a genius.

Read and learn, philanthropists: take your money elsewhere.