Faculty and Staff season ticket prices rise

With ticket prices for the 2012 football season increasing, faculty and staff — some of the TCU’s biggest fans — may have trouble affording season tickets.

According to a TCU Athletics presentation, faculty and staff will receive a 20 percent discount off the base ticket price, but there will not be a discount off donations required for certain sections. Each faculty and staff member will be allowed to purchase four tickets at the discounted price.

Choice of seats will still be based on the Horned Frog Priority Points system.

Chair of the TCU Staff Assembly Randy Chambers said he has received feedback from a few concerned staff members.

“We have discussed it but not in a major way,” Chambers said. “There were a few concerns coming my way from different groups around campus, different employees. We haven’t done a comparison or really looked at it, but I think prices are set.”

He said for the most part, there has not been a lot of negativity.

“Anytime you have a price increase, I don’t care what it involves, you’re going to get some negative feedback because none of us want to see anything go up,” Chambers said.

He said Staff Assembly understood everyone would be affected by the ticket prices, but it was most concerned about larger families. Families with four or more members had the greater chance of not being able to afford tickets.

“They want their kids to be little Horned Frogs and come to the games,” Chambers said. “It might start getting out of their price range.”

Chair of the Faculty Senate Dan Williams said the ticket prices had not been addressed in the Faculty Senate.

“We’ve been so busy with other things like the new eSPOT [evaluations] that it just hasn’t come up yet,” Williams  said. “Honestly, it’s not on our agenda. If a senator brings it up, we’re happy to discuss it in the open forum, but right now I can’t say it is a business item we will take up as a body.”

He said he believed the announcements came out during the winter break and nobody had the chance to discuss it yet.

Chambers said although there were concerns among members of the Staff Assembly, he believed most people saw the increase of ticket prices coming sooner or later.

“For the most part, I think people [have] seen it coming,” he said. “When you’ve got a team for the last several years that’s top 10, top 20, then you’ve got a new stadium and now a new big time conference, you pretty much expect it.”

Chambers said he had confidence in the future direction the university was taking.

“I know the Athletics Department has done their research, and I feel comfortable with their prices,” he said.