[1
Av4
Two
~aii
Section
Two
XXXV. No. 6
ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN, SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 1924.
PRICE, FIVE CENT;
JRVEYING
THE
TI KET
DISTRIB UTIO
T92T 4- -____________________________________ ___
'he Problem Faced By The Athletic Association wSome Cheating Methods Found By Distributing Officials
System Now Used To Allot The Seats 4stWisconsin Game Allotment s The Situation
As Seen From The Student's Point Of View
{ The
T4Y Tq
By Murcion Mable
There has been a steadily growing
mble of discontent lately on the!
.mpus with regard to the manner in
hich football tickets are distrib-
ed.
For' years these complaints havel
:en an annual occurrence. Every
11, students declare that they have
it received their due in the mat-
r of seats, either that they have not
ceived enough or that the seats
hich they have been allotd are no
And as long as tickets are distrib-
uted, there will be these complaints,
a great many of them groundless, a
great many of them justified. It is
inevitable, so long as human beings
are distributing the tickets, that mis-
takes will be made. The dissatisfac-
tion, however, has grown to such huge
proportions this year that some
notice must be made of the way in
which the tickets are given out; to
whom they go, how the actual distri-
bution is undertaken, whether the
proper safeguards against unscrupu-
lous persons are taken, and so forth.
The average person is not familiar
with the immensity of the task which
confronts the Athletic association.
Theirs is the task of distributing with
a minimum of fuss and confusion and
a minimum of error a quantity of
tickets running up into the hundreds
of thousands. Few prsons realize
how much trouble even one mistake
can make. The issuing of so much I
as one duplicate ticket can easily
throw a whole section of the "stand
Into 'confusion during the rush of
seating before a big game,
Itis safe to say that the method of
distribution used by the Athletic as-
sociation is practically fool-proof and
mistake-proof. The system was not
originated here; but under the man-
agement of Harry A. Tillotson, busi-
ness manager of the Athletic associa-
tion, it has been brought to a high.
state of perfection. For the big
games, the association handles some-
times as many as forty-five thousand
tickets and applications; yet the num-
ber of mistakes made is trifling, and,
the number of persons who manage
to cheat the association in some way
or other is negligible.-
Most of the trouble arising in the
distribution, strange to say, is the
fault of the owners of the tickets
themselves. Either in an attempt to
fool or cheat the association, or
through some personal mistake, the
holders of tickets are often able to
throw the ticket office into tempor-
ary panic.
This very possibility of confusion,
through error or trickery, has taught
the ticket distributors to keep a
watchful eye open for all sorts of un-
usual complaints; and they have d-
veloped to an astonishing degree the
ability to foil the would-be trickster's
plans. The knack +f catching these,
irregularities is not easy thing to de-
velop, either. The variety of plans
by which ticket holders try to ob-
tain more than is their due is almost
too great to estimate.
Every year hopeful new crooks
come forward with age-old plans.
The association is on the watch for
these, and usually gets them. But
there also comes every year a new
group of 'new and often highly elab-
orate plans, the brain children of
those who would make two tickets
grow where one before had been.
These are the plans which make the
complaint clerk lie awake nights, his
brow all wrinkled and furrowed with
worry. Some of the plans are devil-
ishly clever.
Last year two Women from a near-
by city presented themselves at the
ticket office just before one of the
big games. There were tears in their
eyes.
"We've forgotten and left our tick-
ets at home!" they cried. "They're
miles from here, and we've come all
the way just to see the game. Can't
you give us duplicates?" '
Nov this sort of request is an 01'
story 11 the Athletic association. Be-
fore every game at least a dozen peo-
ple come to the window with this
complaint., Sometimes they mean
what they say; sometimes they don't.
Nevertheless, the officials have
learned how to deal with this par-
a4.., ... -Aln
to the surprise of the two women,1
they were occupied by two men!
The women turned to H-arry; Harry
turned to the two men.
"Where'd you get your two tick-
ets?" asked the redoubtable Harry.
The two men produced their tickets,
rwhich were bonafide beyond the
shadow of a doubt. But, following a
rule long established, Harry ordered
them out of the seats and into the
office, for a further quizzing. There,
it was found that the two men had
obtained their tickets in Detroit, from
a man they both knew. The man
who had sold them the tickets, it de-
veloped, had bought them from still~
another man, who had lived in the
same house with the two women, and
presumably found the two tickets
after they had left for Ann Arbor,
appropriating them for his own gain.
A particular hoary trick, used by
students in an attemput to secure the
best'seats possible, is to declare on
their application blanks that they are
seniors. In the' rush of distribution
it is, of course, impossible to check
up on the campus rating of every ap-
plicant, and for years the association
bad to trust entirely to the appli-
cant's honesty. The abuse grew, how-,
ever, until some measure had to be
taken. The association finally adopt-
ed the practice of stamping booklets,
when they were given out at registra-
tion time, with certain symbols to
represent the class of the students that occasionally a student who is!
to whom they were issued. When also employed by the University in
applications came in it was a simple some capacity or other, manages to
matter to check up and find out ; procure one booklet as a member ofI
after the tickets
office.
whether the applicant were telling the University staff, and another as a
the truth about his campus age or I student. These cases are so rare,
not. however, that they cause little
But th'e students quickly learned trouble.
the meaning of these various sym- A method by which two persons
bols, and even before the season had may obtain access to the reserved
finished, coupons bearing home made ticket (a method which, incidentally,
or doctored symbols began to flood i seat sections on one reserved seat
the distributing office, then located in was not detected by Athletic associa-
the Press building. The result was tion officials) wag demonstrated last
that the plan of stamping the book- year by two students at one of the
lets with these symbols had to be big games. The two students pre-
abandoned. sented tickets at the door, one of
Now a new system has been de- them for a reserved seat and the
vised. The class of the applicant is other for general admission. The
identified by a small punch, made in student having the reserved seat
a certain corner of the coupon book-, ticket, however, held it so close to
let at the time of registration. If the end that the ticket taker was able
the incoming student is a freshman, to tear off only a small stub.
his booklet is punched in the lower,
left hand corner; if he is a sopho- j Then, when he got inside the gate,
more, it is punched in the upper left he tore the remaining ticket into two
hand corner, and so forth. This plan fair sized stubs. These he held in
is practically fool proof, Zs the pres- such a way that the usher assumed
ence of more than one punch on the they were the stubs for two adjacent
booklet is proof in itself that it has seats. Thus were two able to squeeze
been tampered with. into an excellent position for viewing
Another method of fooling the asso- the game, on only one reserved seat
ciation arises through the fact that ticket.
every member of the faculty or perm- Another incident, not important in
anent University employe is entitled 'itself, shows admirably how difficult
to a coupon book upon payment of ! it is for the Athletic association to
the required fee. Thus it happens j check up on the holders of tickets
Two years ago a student living in
a rooming house applied for and ob-
tained two tickets. He planned to
attend, one of the big games with a
young lady of his acquaintance. The
tickets had been in his possession for
'several days, when suddenly in some
unaccountable manner they disap-
peared. He was desperate. Finally,
two days before the game, he chanced
to run across a man who had two
tickets in his possession and who
was willing to sell them-at a price.
The student purchased the tickets
from the man, only to find when he
got home that, they were the very
same tickets he had so unaccountably
lost! He never saw the man again
who had sold them to him.
The ability of the Athletic associa-
tion to distribute tickets accurately,
however, and the problems with
which they have to deal do not inter-
est the student directly. Sometimes,
in fact, when an upperclassman re-
ceives a ticket to one of the impor-
tant games and finds that the Ath-
letic association has reserved space
on the West stand for his express use,
he is apt to wish that the distribution
system were a little more fallible.
The policy which underlies the dis-
tribution of tickets to various classes
of people is something which can and
does come in for a great deal of crit-
have once left the
icism. Many people believe that the
manner in which certain choice sec-
tions are doled out is fundamentally
wrong.
The policy of the association has.
been from time immemorial first to,
reserve certain of the best sections
for the players, followers of the op-
posing team, the "M" club, the# Presi-
dent's party, and complimentary tick-
ets. The remaining seats (approxi-
mately four-fifths of the total) are
then divided equally between stud-
ents and alumni. Theoretically this
scheme is admirable. On paper it
looks as fair as any plan which could
possibly be devised. Yet, when the
scheme comes actually to be put into
practice, the student is unable, even
if he wishes, to bring his, father and
mother to see the big games! Mani-
festly any scheme which leaves the
student so thoroughly out in the cold
is ready for the scrap heap. On causal
thought, to be pure, it would seem
that the alumni are entitled to as
many tickets as the student body.
And they are-after the student body
has got all it needs.
But until the students have been
given a reasonable number, the alum-
ni have no right to an equal share.
A football team is composed of elev-
en individuals, chosen to represent.
Michigan in a game with representa-
tives of another student body. To
assume that alumni, whose interest
_
Coach
Yost Gives
The Athletic Association's Side)
Director of Intercollegiate Athletics Upholds Present System as Most Practical to Meet the Situation
(Note: The following communica-
tion was received after the leading[
article for this page had been set inI
type. This will account for certain
-repetitions which may be found. It
is hoped, however, that the publica-i
tion of the Athletic association's point'
of view may help to clear up a prob-I
lem which is of interest to all!
studehts.)
Wisconsin Rooters......... 2,500
Faculty ............. . ......2,000'
Press Club Convention, "M"
Club and Coinplimentary. 2,000
Students................17,250
Alumni . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ...17,250
41,000
The question arises as to the allot-
ment for students and alumni. Is it
Each year the Board in Control of right that the: 55,000 -alumni and for-
Athletics reviews the problem of mer students have as many as the
football ticket distribution to the end 9,000 present students? Should they.
that they may be alloted to the vari- have more or less? The Board in
ous groups entitled to them in as fair Control, which is made up of repre-
and equitable a manner as possible. sentatives of the three principal
This is no small task, and so long as groups-faculty, alumni and students
the demand continues to exceed our -agreed that an equitable .distribu-
supply it is inevitable that there be tion would be to grant the same num--
some disappointed persons. ber to alumni and students and to
For the past several years there give members of the faculty the same
have been 36,000 seats in the stadium. privileges as are offered to students.
This year 5,000 additional seats are j Then there is another question.
being built at the east end, raising What are we going to do with the
the total to 41,000. After the visiting citizens of the state who pay the
team, "M" men, guests, and faculty taxes to support our State University?
are taken care of, the remaining seats Is it fair to deny them the privilege
are divided evenly between students of attending the games?
and alumni. For the Wisconsin game, Under the coupon system every
the distribution is as follows: student and faculty member who
wishes it is assured a seat for his or
her own, personal use. This comes
first. Then the question-What is the
most fair and equitable distribution
of other seats to coupon holders? Nine
thousand students will use 9,0001
seats leaving 8,250 of the students al-
lotment to sell. If the first 4,125
students to- apply were permitted to
gets two tickets in addition to he one
they would use for themselves, the
supply would be exhausted and the
oher 4,875 students could not get1
any. To avoid this and to permit every
student an equal right to invite one
guest, the Board in Control agreed toj
sell to each student only one ticket.
This policy of restricted sale has been
in force for several years, but not
until this year has it been necessary
to decrease the extra tickets to one.
This is the result both of increased
numbers of students and increased
demand per student.
The opportunity of any student or
member of the University staff to
buy seats-their location and num-
ber per applicant-is not in the least
affected by the number of tickets.
each alumnus is allowed to purchase.
In other words, if the first applicant
among the alumni had been allowed
to buy all the seats available for this
group, namely 17,250, the only ones
prejudiced would have been the rest
of the alumni; the four ticket limit in
the case of the alumni left the num-
ber of tickets available for students
just where it was.
The various allotments are distrib-
uted as follows:
Visiting team: Beginning in the
middle of north stand and extending
in one direction to include numbe'
required-for Wisconsin 2,500.
"M" Club: Between 20 and 35 yard
lines at one end of South Stand.
Faculty: Various allotments be-
tween 5 and 40 yard lines.
Complimentary: Each member of,
the varsity squad is permitted two,
ocomplimentary tickets and is per-
mitted to purchase two additional
tickets for each year of var-
sity service. Also, a limited number
of University and State officials are
given complimentary tickets. These
are between the 20 and 50 yard lines.
All other seats: Each section in the
stadium, not accounted for above, is
divided equally between students and
alumni, 17,250 seats going to each.
There never has been any secret as
to ticket allotments or divisions of
space in the stands. Blue-prints in
the office are available for inspection
by anyone interested.
In addition to these 41,000 seats
there will be about 2,000 box seats
that can be purchased in blocks of
four by anyone who wishes them.
In distributing tickets the desires
of students, faculty and alumni must
all be' considered and a system em-
ployed that will be fair to all. These
varied interests have been carefully
considered by the Board in Control
and the above plan adopted. The
Board is composed of representatives
of each of these bodies in order that
the viewpoint of each may be ob-
tained. There are four faculty mem-
bers elected by the faculty senate,
three alumni members appointed by
the Regents, three student members
elected by the student body, and the
Director of Athletics, ex-officio, Sec-,
retary.
MIELDING H. YOST,
Director.
in the University is all in the pas
have priority over the student bo
which the team is picked is to reasc
from a false premise. Any fair mini
ed alumnus will agree that the stu
ent body should come first in t
matter of tickets to football game
The Athletic association- has stea
fastly refused to look at the matt
from this point of view, and, fro
all indications, is going to continue it
present policy until football become
a historical cumiosity. A recent ed
toral in the Daily sums up t
trouble in a paragraph:
The tendency to neglect the
student body reflects the spirit
in college and university athletics
which is most criticized by edu-
cational leaders. Too much
thought is given to the commer-
cial aspect; too little attention is
paid to the promotion of the only
worthwhile feature of such con-
tests - a spontaneous student
spirit occasioned by a real feel-
Ing for the team and school.
Tihis can never come while foot-
ball games are promoted in such
a way as to enlarge their possi-
bilities as a spectacle of purely
public interest.
When interviewed concerning tli
recent and most intolerable of all t
restrictions yet imposed-the limitE
tion to one extra ticket for the Wbi
consin and Iowa games-Harry Ti
lotson, the business manager, wl
has charge of all ticket handling, pre
sented figures which purport to ho'
Just where the tickets are on$
These are his figures for the Wiscor
sin game:
A total of 2,500 tickets will go t
Madison for Wisconsin rooters;57
tickets:,for the use otf*"plyers°an
members of thhe football squad;
total of 2,000 tickets for the use
the faculty; a total of 1,950 ticket
to be set aside for the "M" club, lb
President's party, and for compi:
mentaries. This gives 7,024, to 6
subtracted from the entire number;
seats avaIlable, 42,242.
The remainder, which is 35,218,
divided equally, giving the alum
body and the student body each 17
609 tickets.
A number of glaring inconsistenchi
may be noted in these figures. Fir
and foremost is the fact that M
Tillotson has not accounted for t
fact that thousands upon thousan
of persons who have never been coin
nected with the University in any c
pacity hold tickets for the Wisconsi
game. This includes all sorts<
local storekeepers, business me
and professional men. It also i
cludes a very fair chunk of the m a
population of Detroit.
Another inconsistency is the fa<
that in his figures he declares thm
the faculty block is .a thing apa:
from the student allotment. This
in direct contradiction to a sil
handed out at registration whit
states that the faculty tickets copi
from those sections reserved for ti
student body.
This discrepancy,,to be sure, is vu
a small one when compared ti tI
total number of tickets availab
But if a small discrepancy is visib
what may be hidden?
One seat of the trouble is the ma
ner in which the alumni block
more than 17,000 tickets is distrib:
ted. Under the present system, eve;
alumnus is entitled to four tickets s
long as the alumni share holds ot
This first-come-first-served plan r
suits In a great flood of applicatio
on September 1, the first day wh4
they are received. Is there anythii
wrong with this plan, aside from tJ
fact that the Athletic assoiatit
loads . upon itself an unnecessa
burden all at one time? Yes. B
cause workers in the. association a
so completely swamped that th
make 4o attempt to check over app
cations and see whether they are a
tually from alumni. It is well kno
that anyone who wishes to do so m
receive the maximum of four tickE
simply by applying as an alumni
His application will be filled witho
any investigation whatsoever.
Perhaps it is in this that the who
trouble lies. The Athletic associati
-says the demand by alumni is
enormous that it is literally fore
] to give over a block as big asIt
1 l n nr ,,.. r.Fr. b.7 . a. - o
Old Books Take Rise In Price As Supply Dwindles
le
to
From 50 cents to $30, for two cop- by a few large stores backed by
s of the same edition of Pliny's Let- wealthy men of the cities. Book sales
rs is but one of the tremendous in- England as well have taken the up-
bounds in price taken by old books in
the European book market. Six hun-
dred per cent increase, and all in the
space of twenty-five years,-less than1
one thirty-second of the age of the
book.
Librarian William W. Bishop, who
has recently returned from spending
his sabbatical year in Europe reports
a great scarcity of valuable old works
and prices all out of proportion to
their old standards. Mr. Bishop has
been buying old editions since 1899,
and in that year found a copy of
Pliny's Letters published in 1508 by l
Aldus in a shop near Naples. The
price was two and one-half francs,-
slightly less than 50 cents. A year l
ago, while abroad buying books for.
the University library, he found an-
other copy of the same edition in
Venice. The price was 600 francs,"
or nearly $30.
The demand for old books by 1i-1
braries all over the world is becom-
ing more and more large. Buyers
for libraries in South Africa. Austral-
ward trend in prices, and for practic-
ally the same reason.
In central Europe, chiefly in Ger-,
many and Austria, the depreciated
currency resulting from the world
war has caused book companies to
sell their wares outside of their own
countries. Large firms in Germany
have established stores under other
names in Switzerland where the stable!
Swiss money is received for them.
No -duty on books makes the task of
"book-running" comparatively simple,
and valuable old editions are carried
across the borders in motor cars to
fill the orders as they are taken.
Small stocks are maintained at thel
Swiss shops, and as a result, the'
prices. are higher than they would
normally be.-
One firm in Vienna has established
a subsidiary, store in Lucerne, oper-
ating under the same namin as the
parent company, and the preoeeds, in
gold, are helping to swell the depre-
ciated coinage of Austria.
The purchasing of old books in
works is alarmingly small. Medicalf
journals are in great demand among!
these new buyers, with but few oft
those works to be had. Libraries all
over the world have been buying and -
holding medical journals and the sci-I
entific treatises of early times for ]
the last half-century-the trade in an-1
tique literature nears its naturalE
close.
The buying of old and valuableh
books consists of more than thei
simple asking and paying for them.1
Many years are often spent in the1
search for one book alone. Last yearI
Mr. Bishop came to the end of a nine
year hunt when he found, within two
months, three sets of an old German
encyclopedia. The work, published in
64 volumes, is especially valuable as
it contains important biographies to
be found nowhere else. The volumes
were compiled by Zedlar in 1725-35,
and during the nine years since Mr.
Bishop became librarian of the Uni-
versity, lie has' searched for the en-
cyclopedia without even seeing a
copy. Last year he was offered a set
by a German book dealer for $1,000.
Considering this price high, he
quiring where the rest of the set was,r
he was told that a man had arrangedf
to buy the set, but could not pay forE
it all at the time. He had left thef
last two volumes as a pledge, but "
had never returned for them. Mr.I
Bishop had the books called in, and4
bought the entire set for the Univer-
sity.
Much sought-after books are fre-
quently found in out-of-the-way
places-even fairly common works
sometimes leave the listed market en-
tirely and must be sought out among ;
the smaller shops of the continent.1
Six books which Mr. Bishop had listed
with book dealers all over Europe
for four years he finally found all to-
gether on the same shelf in a little
shop in Naples. It scarcely pays the
book dealers to publish complete lists
of stock, 'as the demand for some
works is small, and as a result indi-
vidual search is often necessary to
find a desired book.
Libraries the world over have so
bought up the supply of old books
that of one edition of 500 copies of
Lorenzo Valla's work 'published in
1540, 450 are known to be in libraries,
maps, but only the extremely valu-
able books are ever reproduced. Sev-
eral times a year Mr. Bishop is of-
fered copies of newspapers contain-
ing accounts of Washington's death,
or other rare copies. In most cases,
the papers are facsimiles of the orig-
inals. Facsimiles of letters which
were difficult to distinguish from the
originals were reproduced by clever
lithographing for many years, but less
of this is being done now. There are
many cases in which those trying
to sell the fakes are not themselves
aware of the substitution, even large
booksellers of Europe placing faked
articles on the market innocently'
enough.
Educational poverty has greatly re-
duced the equipment in American
periodical journals of the libraries of
European universities. Cirrency in-
flation has so increased prices as to
cause one national library to reduce
its annual purchase from 300 Amer-
ican journals to 14, and the cost of
Sthe 14 is now higher than the cost
of the originalg300. Ascarcityco
material on America-economic, sci-
entific, medical, and literary, is re-
salting in foreign univeiies an
A