Horace Greeley Homecoming Dance

Some residents have talked to me about the recent Homecoming Dance. The general issue was the limited number of tickets. Some also complained about "scalping" going on with the tickets.

First, congratulations to the student council and the administration for the successful incident free event! We are a victim of our own success. There are limits to the number of tickets we can sell to a dance as there are fire code restrictions as well as a protocol to have appropriate coverage or ratios of students to chaperons. For the first time in recent years, we reached a level of sales that would consider the dance as "sold out".

So how do you properly allocate the scarce resource of tickets in the future? Right now it is done through time. First come first served. Many students, wanting to wait until they could confirm plans, waited until the Friday before the dance to try to purchase tickets. I suggested to my children that paying the $10 (their money) early in the week was like buying a cheap call on their Saturday night plans. (Full disclosure: One of my children is on the student council and was required to be there and help setup as well as take a shift working at the dance.)

Following the dance, this week, I suggested to the administration that they consider two changes to the ticket selling protocol for next time. One, when tickets go on sale, make the first day of sales exclusive to seniors, the second day for juniors and seniors, the third day for sophomores, juniors and seniors, and the fourth day for freshman and sophomores only. Then, open ticket purchases up to the entire school.

Second, in order to prevent scalping and the older grades buying tickets in bulk, have every ticket numbered and a name logged with the sale. At the dance, only the person whose name is listed with the ticket number will be allowed to use that ticket.

These are just suggestions. I am sure there are many other good ideas that would make sense. I know the administration is considering many solutions to what is, in my opinion, a good problem; too much student participation.

JSM


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