Despite ticket lines that snaked around blocks and a last-minute swine flu scare, students and organizers alike considered last Friday's Fall Ball a success.
In a break with precedent, the Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate capped attendance at 2,500 and issued tickets from the campus center.
"It went really well," said Tufts Community Union (TCU) Vice President Antonella Scarano, a senior.
New policies were put in place after the Tufts University Police Department expressed concern about conduct at recent dances, at which some students were abusive to security staff and the dance floor was left covered in urine and underwear.
The TCU Senate, which ran the event, provided extra bathroom facilities both inside and outside the Gantcher Center, where the dance was held. Additional police officers were also on hand to organize students.
"It's very clear that when we capped the tickets … it did make a difference in the facilities," Scarano said.
"Fall Ball was a lot more organized this year," said sophomore Callie McHugh, vice president of social programming for the sophomore class. "It seemed a lot more calm and organized … and it seemed like people toned down the amount of alcohol, too, which is a good thing."
Tufts Emergency Medical Services (TEMS) received markedly fewer alcohol-related calls during the event than in past years. There were five calls to TEMS from within Gantcher, three of which were alcohol-related, according to junior Justin Pick, director of operations for TEMS. TEMS also received two calls outside the event, adding up to a grand total of seven calls for the night. Pick said the TEMS team was busier than on an average weekend, but received significantly fewer calls than in prior years for this event.
Despite the worries of university officials that the crowded and heated environment could spark a swine flu outbreak, Pick said there were no event-related TEMS calls regarding swine flu.
For this Fall Ball, the Senate and the Office for Campus Life collaborated to distribute tickets last week. Some students last week voiced frustration with the ticket policy. The process was based on a first-come first-served basis, with tickets distributed between Tuesday and Friday.
"The first time I tried to get tickets … I waited in a long time and didn't even get onto the main street where the line was," junior Amanda Schulte said. "If they do keep the system, it needs to change so people have more access to getting tickets, so it's less stressful and so people don't feel like they have to wait in line for hours just to go to the dance."
TCU President Brandon Rattiner called the ticket distribution the "single biggest problem in the whole Fall Ball," but said that there was little alternative to the TUPD-mandated student cap for the dance.
He suggested that the hype generated by the tickets actually helped the event. "I think that raising the profile of the whole evening via the tickets actually helped make it a more successful event," he said, adding that he knew of no student who wanted to attend the event but was not able to because of the ticket policy.
Scarano agreed. "I think that everyone who wanted to go got to go," she said. "A couple hours before there were 300 tickets left, so I would like to think no one got excluded." Tickets sold out by Friday afternoon.
--
Katherine Sawyer contributed reporting to this article.
