UBC purchased 442 Olympic tickets, and the way in which they’ve been distributed have left many students out in the cold.

The 2010 Olympics are less than five days away, and spectators and the provincial government have dished out millions of dollars for Olympic and Paralympic tickets.

As a venue host for the Games, UBC has purchased and distributed tickets to various stakeholders on campus. Of those, 82 tickets (19 per cent), were allocated to UBC students.

The rest of the Olympic tickets were allocated to six groups: 98 tickets were given to staff and faculty, 118 for UBC Alumni Affairs, 58 for UBC executives and the Board of Governors (BoG), 18 for the 2010 Secretariat, 34 for UBC Athletics, and 34 for the University Neighbourhoods Association (UNA).

In addition, all of the tickets were for events at the Doug Mitchell Thunderbird Winter Sports Centre, home of men’s, women’s, and Paralympic sledge hockey. The information was disclosed after queries from freelance journalist Stanley Tromp.

According to the Vancouver 2010 website, an “A” ticket to women’s ice hockey preliminaries at the Doug Mitchell Thunderbird Winter Sports Centre costs $75. An “A” ticket to the men’s ice hockey quarterfinals is the highest price at the on-campus venue at a price of $300, and an “A” ticket to the gold medal ice sledge hockey game is $50.

Student distribution

“The tickets were allocated across several groups on campus….In an ideal world, we’d love to be able to offer many more tickets than we were able to,” said Michelle Aucoin, Director of the UBC 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Secretariat.

Each group was responsible for distributing those tickets as they saw fit, explained Aucoin. The $40,000 for the tickets was an amount set aside in her department budget.

Associate Director of Student Development Chad Hyson and the Student Olympic Collaborative (SOC) were responsible for distributing the tickets to students. They did so through raffles, contests and draws, such as a photo contest and an essay contest.

“I think the [SOC] was really conscious around the idea of not finding themselves in the position where they were giving groups tickets,” Hyson said, “but really trying hard to use them in a way that would engage students in Games-related activities…[so] students had equal access to win.”
“They were really looking for events that were open to all students on campus,” said Hyson, citing the Student Leadership Conference and the upcoming Torch Relay as examples.

First-year Commerce student Michelle Qi said that she heard about the contest through her residence. “If all your floor members all signed something, [you could have] won tickets….It was just encouraging everyone to do a survey,” she explained.

Ten out of the fourteen students randomly surveyed in and around the SUB on Friday afternoon did not know Olympic tickets were up for grabs. There were mixed feelings on whether they would have signed up.

First-year Law student Zack Ng didn’t know about the raffle. “I think that UBC is rather decentralized in terms of student life,” he said. “I’m not surprised. Maybe they could have done more about it, but I wouldn’t have known about it anyway.”

The AMS was not given any tickets. Outgoing AMS President Blake Frederick said that he had not even heard that the university purchased any or allocated an amount of tickets to students.

UBC’s VP Students office is currently conducting a survey on academic experience, where students will be entered in a draw to win Olympic tickets.

Mixed givings

BCIT and SFU also obtained Olympic tickets. Both institutions raffled off all of their tickets to students, staff and faculty, reported The Globe and Mail. UBC only distributed a limited number of their tickets in this manner.

The UNA used contests, raffles and draws to give away their Olympic tickets. A household could only win once, and the draws were widely advertised through the residents’ program guide that is sent to all homes twice a year.

Alumni Affairs disseminated the tickets via a “stewardship strategy,” or from a list of individuals who had done significant work in alumni and student engagement. UBC Athletics used a similar approach, giving tickets to alumni and partners.

“We wanted to do something for alumni who have come back and helped out…given something back to UBC,” said Chris Petty, Director of Communications at UBC Alumni Affairs.

Representatives from both groups said that they decided against giving away the tickets via lottery because there was a limited number allocated to them.

“When we collected the names…we had about as many people as we did tickets,” Petty explained.

The UBC executive and BoG members were given tickets, and Board members got two tickets each.

“It’s not like we’ve been blocking off 50 per cent of the tickets,” said Aucoin. “Each member of our Board of Governors is going to get to go to one game.

“I don’t think that that’s an unreasonable expectation, that members of our Board have an opportunity to understand what the Games mean to the university and they have the chance to represent the university as ambassadors.”

Declining free tickets

Not all university administration accepted the tickets. UBC VP External, Legal and Community Relations Stephen Owen was one such individual.
“I didn’t want any appearance of preference,” Owen explained. “I was happy to let other people share the tickets who have attributed [sic] more to [the Games] than I have.”

Owen feels that UBC’s distribution of tickets was done fairly. “Michelle has created a really balanced availability of tickets to various parts of the UBC community…and they have each come up with their own plans of how they could most fairly distribute them,” he said.

The provincial government spent about $1 million to purchase 3200 Olympic tickets, with 200 of those given to MLAs and ministers. David Cadman, Vancouver City Councilor, declined tickets to the Opening Ceremonies.

He feels that UBC administration should have done the same.

“If there are people in the administration who are going to these events simply because of their position, then I would question that,” he said.
“Those are the people, quite frankly, who are paid the most and can easily afford to pay for their tickets,” he added. “Why would the university use public dollars to subsidize their participation?”

Aucoin argued otherwise. “I think the university is in a unique situation, compared to many of the other government situations.”
—With files from Sarah Chung and Roel Moeurs

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