With 356 names on the waiting list, A&O announced Monday that it will release 1,300 more tickets for Sunday’s Kanye West concert.
“This was the maximum number of tickets we could put on sale without posing fire-safety hazards and without having to greatly expand the security personnel that’s already scheduled to work the show,” said A&O chairman and Communication senior Peter Kahn. “It still has to remain a small private show, which is under the contract terms we negotiated.”
Wednesday at 10 a.m., A&O will sell tickets to students on the wait list first, and then will open the remaining tickets, including any not picked up by wait-listed students, to the rest of the student population on Thursday at 10 a.m. Instead of the original four-tickets-per-Wildcard limit, students on the wait list will only be able to purchase a maximum of two tickets to the concert.
“Basically we want to try to please as many students as possible,” said Medill senior Erica Futterman, A&O co-director of promotions. “We’re very excited that we can open up more tickets but given the current situation, the two-ticket limit works better.”
A&O worked with the athletic department and University Police to open more general admission seats for the show. To accommodate the increase in the number of tickets, there will be a limited expansion of the upper level at Welsh-Ryan Arena, which previously was set to be closed during the concert.
The first 2,300 tickets sold out in less than four hours after going on sale Wednesday. Students lined up at Norris University Center as early as eleven hours before tickets went on sale at 10 a.m. and by the time they sold out, 927 students had purchased tickets.
The new tickets will be sold by A&O independently of the Norris Box Office, which handled ticket sales last week. Kahn said A&O decided to sell tickets on its own after “realizing our mistakes” during ticket sales on Wednesday, when the line – which at one point stretched to almost 1,000 students long – overwhelmed the box office and A&O.
Kahn said A&O members were more disappointed in themselves than in the box office for Wednesday’s situation.
“We figured if we take matters completely into our own hands, we’ll be able to maximize crowd control and efficiency,” he said. “We feel like we’ll be fixing our mistakes from last week the best way we can with this plan.”
A&O will set up a table near the main desk in Norris, with the line feeding out onto the South Lawn. Kahn said he expects ticket sales to move more quickly than last week, as A&O will have at least three members working the ticket counter at the same time. Wildcards will be checked against a computer database to prevent students who already have tickets from purchasing more.
Wait-listed students shared their relief at getting a second chance to buy tickets after A&O sent out an e-mail with the good news.
“I am tremendously relieved that they’ve increased capacity to the concert,” said Rohan Sharma, who arrived at the box office at 11 a.m. on Wednesday and was 20th in line when tickets sold out. “I thought that they weren’t going to be able to secure more tickets.”
But Sharma, a Weinberg junior, said hearing about the two-ticket limit was disappointing.
“That is a little bit of a downer because I really intended to go as a really large group,” Sharma said. Still he said it was “better than nothing.”
If tickets don’t sell out by the end of the day Thursday, Kahn said the remaining tickets will probably be turned over to the box office, “but I can say with confidence that we’ll sell out Thursday.”
Kanye’s Touch the Sky concert will begin at 7:30 p.m. Sunday. Kahn said five Purple Express Route buses with a special Welsh-Ryan Arena stop will run between 6 to 8 p.m. and between 10 to 11:30 p.m. to shuttle students to and from the show.
Reach Andrea Chang at [email protected].
