Wednesday, November 30, 2011 An independent, student-run newspaper serving the Virginia Tech community since 1903
www.collegiatetimes.com
COLLEGIATETIMES 108th year, issue 120
News, page 4
Food & Drink, page 7
ACC tickets sell out fast STUDENTS HOPING TO GO TO CHARLOTTE HAD DIFFICULTIES BUYING TICKETS SUNDAY JOSH HIGGINS news reporter Student tickets to the ACC Championship Game sold out within 47 minutes. The Virginia Tech Athletics ticket office opened sales for nearly 1,000 student tickets on Sunday at noon. However, the large number of students trying to buy tickets flooded the site, leaving some empty-handed. “My brother and I were on the HokieTickets site at 12 p.m. on Sunday when the site was supposed to open, so we could buy tickets for our group of 18,” Molly Reed said. “We’d all planned on going and figured if we got on the site right at noon, we should be able to secure enough tickets.” But Reed and her brother were wrong. The freshman engineering major was unable to purchase a student ticket, since the website crashed shortly after she logged on. Stephen Medley, the associate ticket manager for Tech athletics, said the large volume of students using the site is not unusual during firstcome, first-served ticket sales. The ticket office put a queue in place on the site that allowed only a certain number of students to purchase tickets at any given time. Once the queue filled, anyone who visited the site was directed to a countdown screen that refreshed every 60 seconds. Medley, who was monitoring the site during Sunday’s sale period, said he sat through about six to seven cycles before he was able to enter the site. He said he got one error message while monitoring, which said “unable to secure seats in this level” because lower-level seats had sold out. Shortly after, the ticketing provider reloaded the site to eliminate the lower-level seats. During the reload, no students were able to purchase tickets, and people on the site would have received a message saying the store was not available. Once the reload was complete, the message went away and students were allowed to continue purchasing tickets, Medley said. Lower-level seats were limited to two per person to give
as many students as possible a chance to purchase them, but without forcing students to purchase single tickets alone, Medley said. Upperlevel tickets did not have a per-person limit. Fans are turning to sites like StubHub.com to purchase tickets. However, prices are often higher than face value on these sites. As of last night, tickets for the game ranged from $75 to more than $6,000 on StubHub.com. Face value for lower-level tickets range from $70 to $175, and upper-level tickets range from $25 to $40. “We started searching on StubHub and TicketCity, but of course, tickets there were double the price, and it was hard to find a group of tickets big enough to accommodate all the people we had planning on going,” Reed said. “But regardless, I am just happy to have the tickets and will be heading to Charlotte this weekend to cheer on my Hokies.” Both Tech and Clemson were allocated 10,000 tickets in the Bank of America stadium that they could sell to their fans. Universities pay face value for these tickets. Tech designated about 1,000 of these tickets for students and 500 for the marching band. The remaining 8,500 tickets are sold to Hokie fans through other means, Medley said. Clemson sold tickets differently than Tech. Clemson’s ticket office opened a lottery on Monday from 12:05 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., according to Clemson’s athletics department website. Students had to register for the lottery, and winners were notified later that evening. Each student who won a ticket was allowed to purchase it for $40. Lottery winners can pick up their tickets with other people they would like to sit with at the game. Tech would like to be able to change their ticketing system to improve ticket sales for students. Medley said the ticket office would prefer to use an extended sale for student tickets, like it does for football and basketball season tickets. But he said when working within a short time frame, that method is impossible.
Awful Arthur’s closes its doors ERIN CHAPMAN news reporter Students returning from Thanksgiving break found a familiar bar in downtown Blacksburg gone for good. Awful Arthur’s closed its doors permanently on Saturday, Nov. 19. “It’s something the partners have discussed, and it ended up just being the right time to close,” said Michael Soriano, one of the restaurant’s four partners. Soriano began planning for the 12,000-square foot restaurant five years ago, but it became difficult to run successfully because of its large size. Soriano said he and his partners hoped the large restaurant and entertainment venue would fill a niche in Blacksburg. “I think that in general, the concept we had just didn’t work in Blacksburg,” he said. “Five years ago (when) we started planning in detail, there was nothing like that in Blacksburg.” Other Awful Arthur’s
locations in Roanoke and Salem are not as large as that of Blacksburg. In August, Blacksburg’s Awful Arthur’s leased the upstairs portion of the restaurant to the digital advertising firm Modea as an effort to make the restaurant smaller and more manageable. But the downturn in the economy and the pressure of operating a large restaurant for four years had already taken its toll. Soriano and his partners decided their efforts would be better spent focusing on their other businesses and the other Awful Arthur’s locations. The restaurant’s sudden closure has left local music promoters looking for other venues. Joey Paulekas, who manages marketing for the local event production and promotion companies Third Eye Presents and Boogieburg Soundsystem, is worried how this clos see AWFUL’S / page six
Opinions, page 5
Sports, page 3
Classifieds, page 6
Sudoku, page 6
FINDING THE RIGHT CHORD
A survey of more than 1,000 members of the Virginia Tech community found these to be the top four sources of music.
Panel discussion aims to help music industry and listeners reconcile competing interests as students use free services BY ZACH CRIZER | editor-in-chief Virginia Tech students’ favorite music is increasingly streaming into their ears instantly, and for free — a trend leaving many of their favorite artists with weakening streams of revenue. A survey conducted by the university’s Communication Network Services in coordination with the Future of Music Coalition shows Hokies are most likely to access music for no cost through YouTube, Pandora and free versions of services such as Spotify and Last.fm. Tech students’ music preferences will be further explored in a panel discussion tonight that will discuss “The Value of Music.” The event, hosted by CNS in a partnership with the FMC, will be held in Squires Student Center’s Old Dominion Ballroom tonight at 7:30. Kristin Thomson, who is a consultant for the music advocacy group FMC, said the discussion will seek to shed light on the changing landscape of the music business and how artists can reconcile their need for revenue with consumers’ preferences and use of emerging technologies. “We’ve always been interested in ensuring that artists are fairly compensated for their work in this environment with so many changes,” Thomson said. “We’re also really interested in how music fans can discover and enjoy new music. And there are all these emerging technologies to try and relate the two together.” Thomson, who will be moderating the panel, said college campuses are fascinating for FMC because students are using the latest technologies to acquire and listen to music. She said one of FMC’s main goals is
to educate musicians on the shifting dynamics of the business.
FREE SERVICES ‘GOOD ENOUGH’ The survey of Tech community members found a clear preference for free streaming services. A vast majority of the survey’s respondents said they use YouTube or Vevo either “a lot” or “sometimes” to listen to music. The popular video service, which is free, was the most common method of listening to music. Pandora and other free Internet radio sources, were the second most popular source for music. “We’ve also been testing, kicking the tires on a lot of these services, really trying to understand what the consumer experience is like,” Thomson said. “We spend a lot of time actually using the services to figure out why they’re cool or why they’re not cool so we can understand why consumers might adopt them.” FMC’s report on the Tech survey said YouTube and Pandora dominate college listening patterns because they provide “free access to relatively large catalogs of music.” According to the report, YouTube offers the world’s most diverse ondemand music catalog. It is attractive because it is free, legal and searchable. Pandora differs in its form of customization, but, according to the report, has seen tremendous growth in part because it “facilitates music discovery, leading listeners to other artists or songs that share the same traits that the listener already likes.” But the survey showed one indicator looms large in college students’ decisions: cost.
youtube
pandora
spotify
radio
see MUSIC / page four
Musician revenue from sale or play of single song
$.00025
$0.09
$.0013
$.15-.50
Tech increases financial aid available PRISCILLA ALVAREZ news staff writer The average college student today graduates with more than $25,000 dollars in debt, and tuition continues to increase. To help alleviate the burden on students, the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors increased financial aid available to students to $390 million, an increase from $342.2 million in 2008. The aid encompasses both subsidized and unsubsidized student loans, grants, scholarships and employment for students. “The financial aid I received wasn’t really beneficial at all, and hopefully this increase will help that,” said Erica Bassuq, a freshman university studies major. Tech increased the aid amount because of the suffering economy and its effect on financial aid requirements, said Barry Simmons, the director of scholarships and financial aid. “Over the past several years some of the requirements from the financial aid have been eased a bit so more people have been brought in to be eligible,” Simmons said. The total $390 million was split into three categories: $147 million went to loans, $174 million went to grants and scholarships, and $69 million went to student employment, according a yearly report by the Finance and Audit Committee on student financial aid published on Sept. 20. The new aid packages were voted on during the Board of Visitors’ most recent meeting in early November. “The purpose of the report was
to primarily focus on undergraduate financial aid, which is about $114 million of this amount,” said Tim Hodge, the assistant vice president of Budget and Financial Planning. About $22 million of the undergraduate financial aid came from the federal government, $13 million came from the Commonwealth of Virginia, $33 million came from private funds and endowment money through Tech, and $45 million came from outside sources, according to the Finance and Audit Committee report. “When we add this all up it paints a picture that there is a lot of money to support and make sure that access to an education is attainable. This is really something important that the university has been working on by speaking with federal and state officials,” Hodge said. In the past 10 years, Tech has increased institutional aid available for undergraduate students from $1.1 million to $13.3 million. But paying for college will still be difficult for students and families, because while aid increases, tuition costs grow as well. On average, tuition and fees will increase 7.9 percent for FY12, according to the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia’s 2010-11 report on tuition and fees at Virginia public schools. Tuition also increases because state universities like Tech are receiving less money each year from the state. Since October 2007, the university has lost $75 million in support from the
Splitting the bill At public universities in Virginia, the state pays a percentage of the cost of tuition, and individual students pay the difference. Tuition costs for students
2001-02
increase as state support decreases. These graphs compare the percentage of state support this year vs. 10 years ago.
2011-12
State Students VICTORIA ZIGADLO / COLLEGIATE TIMES
Virginia taxpayers, which eventually pushes up tuition. And because of the increasing cost of college, the aid money must be divided between more eligible students. “We’re always concerned for affordability and always advocat-
ing for more money for financial aid from the budget office,” Simmons said. “There are efforts underway to take affordability a little bit more seriously and develop programs for middle-income students here at the state level.”