Senior Pub Night marred with problems

Last Thursday's Senior Pub night at the Hong Kong in Harvard Square ran into numerous issues which may increase the cost of Senior Week this May.

Between 60 and 80 fake tickets were used at the door according to Senior Class Council Member Courtney Benson. The fake tickets were made on a home computer and all but one contained a stamp from the Office of Student Activities (OSA).

Benson said the influx of fake tickets was an issue because "the people at the door were not expecting it at all."

Tufts Community Union (TCU) Treasurer Josh Belkin said the fake ticket problem was compounded with the absence of a list to cross-check names. "At previous senior pub nights there was a list of the ticket numbers and it was verified with your ticket," he said.

A new policy of the TCU Treasury forces student groups to use the OSA ticket printer to prevent problems. Belkin said "we mandated that all student groups use the OSA ticket printer to legitimize the process." The Senior Class Council must follow these regulations because they receive TCU funding.

This machine was malfunctioning recently and was unable to print the tickets for senior pub night. Now groups must get their tickets printed at Gnomon copy, which is "very easy to reproduce."

Belkin said the policy was created to prevent groups from skimming off ticket sales.

Belkin said centralizing the ticketing authority makes auditing groups easier.

According to Benson, the Class Council has been forced to make changes because of Thursday's problems. "We are going to have to spend more money on getting Ticketmaster-type tickets to make sure they can't be reproduced, which takes even more money away from our budget."

In addition to the ticket fiasco, there was an issue on one of the busses on the way back from the bar. One of the windows was broken, and according to Council Member Carrie Postel, "We don't know who it was, but as the buses were leaving to go back to Tufts at the end of the night someone broke one of the back windows of one of the buses."

Though they have not received the bill, Postel estimates the window will cost approximately 500 dollars. The Council will have to pay for the replacement, since the perpetrator has not been identified. Though there is no specific program that will lose funding, Postel said the money would have gone to events like senior week tickets or other pub nights.