Shocking disorganisation sees students lose out on their own ball

Cinderella won’t be going after all

8 years ago

I am a morning person. I can get up at six or seven am and be perfectly happy to start the day. So when Wednesday morning came around, my five am slot in our queuing rota didn’t seem all that bad. Our group started at four am, and for a weekday with nine ams we thought this would be time enough to begin queueing for tickets for a Christmas Ball.

We couldn’t have been more wrong.

When the first group got there the queue was well past Rectors and half way down Hope Street. Resembling a homeless shelter, people tried in vain to shield themselves from the rain under cardboard boxes. Needless to say, our group was unsuccessful in aquiring any tickets. For starting at four am, this is unbelievably painful .

With queue jumpers, raffle ticket fails and a noticeable lack of presence of Mermaids, we decided to put some questions to Mermaids.

So close, but yet so far…

Some had queued for seven hours or more and failed to get a ticket.

Mermaids Ball Convener Ali Saldanha said: “People wanted to make sure that they got a ticket so started queueing from midnight which meant that even those who started at four am were unlucky. There was nothing we could do to prevent this.”

Although obviously there was more demand than tickets available, this “tough luck” response doesn’t satisfy me. There should have been some guidance as to who wouldn’t have got tickets: all it would have taken was one Mermaid to come out and establish a cut-off point so we didn’t all wait with the desperate hope that we might get a ticket, only to be told at 10.30am that they had sold out!

For combatting queue jumpers, they had a plan, handing out raffle-tickets (allegedly from 7:25am) but it was far too disorganised to have any effect. Considering people had been queuing jumping since three am this didn’t help much, especially since some people in the queue didn’t get a raffle ticket until AFTER 9:30am.

In response to the queue-jumping, Mermaids said that: “People will have to implement a self-policing system”.

Yes that would be a great idea if you fancy a fight at three in the morning! Maybe if they’d got out of bed earlier they would have seen that most people queueing in the rain at three am don’t have the best temperaments. It should not be left to those in the queue to pick up the slack.

A bit late for raffle tickets!

Seeing as we’re discussing raffle tickets and lack of organisation, not only were people NOT asked for their raffle ticket upon finally reaching the box office, but there was also a massive disparity between the number of actual ball tickets sold and the amount of people who had these raffle tickets.

Queue jumping is something that needs to be managed more effectively. Surely your large subcommittee (who have tickets reserved for them ) could have been out managing the queue.

The only good guys that came out of this cock up were ‘WeQ4U’. They charged a total of £55 pounds (ticket included) to ‘Q4U’ in the rain. Even they were unsuccessful in getting tickets, however they reimbursed their customers.

Q4U said that: “Given the over-hyped nature of the queue itself, large amounts of new first years were wrongly duped into queuing much earlier than was necessary. Ultimately, what should have been a smooth queuing process actually resulted in the worst logistical performance of any society that our members have ever witnessed in the last five years at St Andrews.”

So how did Mermaids react to WeQ4U? Well, they accused them of ruining the Christmas spirit by trying to make a profit from the tickets. Bah Humbug! The real Scrooges here are the ticket sellers who greedily bought five tickets and are now selling them for extortionate prices. One seller on St Andrews ticket exchange was selling three tickets for £115 EACH!

When questioned about allowing people to buy five tickets at a time, Mermaids said: “The five ticket limit will stay the same – we are asked this question every year and even if we limit the ticket purchase to two-three per person this would not solve the re-selling of tickets for extortionate prices.”

Hmmm…“asked this question every year”? Well then, clearly something needs to change. It is understandable that those with nine ams can’t get their own tickets, so why not offer them all online and limit it to one? The union could invest a little in the 21st century and update their system to deal with ticket selling. With the amount of events they host, surely someone would have thought about it by now?

So what’s the message we can all take away from this Christmas tale?

“Don’t believe the hype”- Alex Turner… I don’t know whether he had St Andrews Christmas Ball sales in mind when he wrote ‘I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor’ but we can all appreciate the sentiment now.

Hermione Bird

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