This year, Phillips Academy students may be able to forgo the long lines and early camp-outs that usually accompany the Grasshopper Night ticket rush. At Sunday’s Student Council meeting, Student Council President Tantum Collins ’08 proposed a plan to allow students to reserve their Grasshopper Night tickets online, a new method of distributing the highly sought-after tickets for the yearly student talent show. Student Council is still working out the details of the plan though a series of inter-council emails and discussions with students and faculty members. Collins proposed that students be sent a link that would forward them to an online application, where a student would log in with his or her PAnet username and password. Once logged in, the student could reserve one to three tickets for a specific day and show time. Under the proposed plan, students would then be awarded tickets by lottery, giving as many students as possible the tickets that they requested. According to the latest version of the plan, students would then have to claim their tickets physically by visiting the box office within a certain period of time. Students who did not receive tickets through the original lottery may be re-entered to receive unclaimed tickets. Those who did not obtain tickets at all could still arrive on the day of each show and wait in the standby lines. Most people who wait in these lines have gotten into the show in past years, according to Bruce Bacon, Chair of the Theatre and Dance Department and Director of Grasshopper Night. Due to the popularity of Grasshopper Night among students and their families, hundreds of students have woken up early the week of the shows to ensure a top spot in line. Some students risked cruising out of their dorms before the 6 a.m. restriction to make sure that they would have a place in line when the Grasshopper tickets went on sale at 7 a.m. According to Bacon, both students and the administration have mixed feelings about the current distribution process. Some students were unhappy in the past because the tickets have been in such high demand that the ticket office would often open earlier than expected and the shows would be sold out before the time originally scheduled for the tickets to go on sale. Many of the times for ticket sales are also inconvenient for students’ schedules. Ellie Choi ’08 expressed the frustration that many students experienced with the old system. “I think it’s the fairest way possible for students to get their tickets without having to worry about waking up at the crack of dawn and risk not getting your tickets,” she said. “Last year, I was sitting in the line for about an hour and still did not get my tickets, not to mention that there were probably 50 people in front of me,” added Choi. Although Student Council has not yet finalized the system, the preliminary idea seems to show great promise. “People were just frustrated that there were a lot more people that wanted to see the show than we [had] seats for. By putting the decision in the students’ hands, they get to decide how the distribution will occur,” said Mr. Bacon.
