Tufts' annual Fall Ball took place on Friday with a few alterations from last year, including a new entrance, the availability of food at the event and heightened measures against ticket scalping.
Students entered the event directly through the front doors of the Gantcher Center this year instead of through the front doors of Cousens Gymnasium.
The entrance to the event was congested and crowded last year, something that the Office for Campus Life (OCL) hoped to improve this year, according to David McGraw, OCL's assistant director. McGraw told the Daily last fall that from 10:30 p.m to 11:00 p.m, 1500 students joined the queue.
"If there was one thing I was hoping that we would fix for this year, it was that," McGraw said.
This year's larger entrance relieved congestion outside of the venue, yet event organizers still deployed more staff members to monitor the doorways and scan IDs, according to Programming Board Co-Chair Christopher Blackett, a senior.
"We were able to have a much shorter line," he said. "We were able to see whether people actually had their tickets and not someone else's tickets a lot more effectively."
Tufts Emergency Medical Services (TEMS) Executive Director Robert Kaufman, a senior, noted that this year marked a decrease in students who required hospitalization.
TEMS transported eight students to the hospital for alcohol-related issues: six students at the event, one student off-site during the event and one student after the event, according to Kaufman. Last year, 12 students were hospitalized.
The OCL added several restrictions this year to prevent ticket scalping and transfers between students, according to McGraw. TuftsLife advertised a message containing the OCL policy against exchanges and refunds, as well as the fact that scalping was illegal, he said.
"I don't know how many people have attempted to sell them [on TuftsLife], but we don't see as many as what there was last year," he said. "The process of selling a ticket actually is kind of a fool's process because if you purchase some else's ticket, technically that ticket is no longer valid."
The tickets also included student names and ID numbers that were scanned at the entrance, another new measure, according to Blackett.
"We had a few cases of students trying to give their tickets to their friends, but we would just scan the barcodes and then see that it didn't match their IDs, so none of them made it in," Blackett said.
McGraw said that 2,500 tickets for the event went on sale last Monday and sold out in about four-and-a-half hours, despite a minor glitch in the system that prevented students from securing tickets until approximately 20 minutes after the expected ticket sale time of 12 p.m.
The number of available tickets is based on the limited size of the venue and the fire safety code, he added.
"We are disappointed in the sense that we just don't have a space on this campus that can hold everyone who wants to go to this event," McGraw said. "However, our main priority is the safety and security of the students, and so for us, we can't oversell."
Another new addition to Fall Ball was the inclusion of pizza for the guests, McGraw said.
"I think it just gave it more of a well-rounded feel," McGraw said.
Blackett hopes to see the budget for Fall Ball increase in the future, noting that Tufts' spending on the event is lower than that for similar events at other universities.
"I know some of the students have discussed having the ability to make the event a little bit bigger, and that obviously comes with more budget," McGraw said.
