Five hundred more tickets to the Cage Rage fall concert scheduled for Oct. 26 went on sale yesterday following a reevaluation of the event venue's capacity by public safety officials, Concert Board announced over the weekend.
Tufts University Police Department (TUPD) and the fire marshal gave Concert Board the go-ahead to sell more tickets after reviewing concerns over Carzo Cage's occupancy limit, giving students desperate to attend the concert new hope.
"At any event, we want to give the majority of students the opportunity to attend," Office for Campus Life (OCL) Director Joe Golia said. "Working with TUPD and the fire marshal, we were approved to allow more students into the space."
Electronic indie-rock group Passion Pit will headline the show, which also features hip-hop artist K.Flay and Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears. The event is designed to combine the university's traditional separate fall hip-hop and rock shows into one large concert.
Golia said that only 1,500 tickets were sold initially due to a lack of certainty about the precise number of students who could safely fit in the space.
"Last year was the first time that space was used for a concert and the show was so small space was never an issue," he said. "It takes some time to figure out exactly how many people any space can accommodate."
Given the high demand for tickets this year, the OCL asked for help from TUPD and the fire marshal to assess the space's maximum occupancy.
"The number sold earlier was based on the occupancy of the cage as we originally understood it," Concert Board Co-Chair Nicole Goodwin, a junior, said. "After we had sold all the tickets a few weeks ago, the fire marshal reevaluated the occupancy of the room and found that we could sell additional tickets."
Concerns like the number and locations of bathrooms, exits and entrances factored into the calculation, according to Golia.
Goodwin said she received positive feedback following Concert Board's announcement.
"I know a lot of people had asked me after it was sold out if they could get tickets," she said. "There were a lot of people who still wanted to come, so I think there is a lot of excitement about it."
Even with the increased number of tickets on sale, Golia still anticipates a sold-out show. "More than half of the additional 500 tickets sold within the first few hours," he said. "I expect the rest to be gone before the concert next week."
