To be completely honest, I feel a little betrayed. Dartmouth always talks up how New Hampshire's "first in the nation" primary status means that candidates are often stopping by (relative to other schools) and that as students, we get a great deal of access to them. Now, I know that Spaulding Auditorium has a fairly small capacity (and is the only real option for an on-campus debate), and due to media accommodations, there will only be about 700 seats in the hall. But what was originally advertised to me as a great benefit of the College, it turns out, is only available to a chosen few.
The College has 335 seats, going to a variety of recipients. Roughly 200 of these were allocated in the lottery, with about 115 going to students. The other 135 go to invited guests of the College, which according to The Dartmouth, "may include students and Secret Service agents." Since 3,800 entries were received for the lottery, that means between five and six percent of the people who submitted requests will be attending the debate itself. The percentage of students attending must be even smaller, as the number of tickets available to students through the lottery, although a majority of tickets allocated, was still a small number in raw terms.
While I appreciate the ease of applying to the lottery, it does not seem a particularly fair way to allocate tickets. Most people I know entered the lottery because there was no harm in applying. This means that a good friend of mine, who happens to be a Republican with some, but not a great deal of interest in the Democratic primary, is attending the debate, while officers of the College Democrats are not. I am all for broader participation in the political process, but in an event with the limited seating capacity of this debate, I would hope most seats went to people who care a great deal about it. Virtually every other event on this campus is done on a first-come, first-serve basis (including presidential candidate visits), but not the debate. Obviously there are logistical reasons for this. The tickets need to be dealt with ahead of time, since there will be Secret Service in attendance. But there should have been a way that people who waited three years for this debate would actually be able to attend it.
When it comes to events that everyone wants to attend but to varying degrees, lottery systems always end with bad feelings. My brother attends Boston Colleg e, which after years of the tried-and-true camp-out-for-basketball tickets method has now reverted solely to a lottery system. But at least their tickets are transferable, so students can always find a way to go to games if they strongly want to attend. On the plus side, a Dartmouth-only lottery is far preferable to the much maligned result at many public lectures of community members filling all the seats while we, the students, are stuck in overflow rooms. This time around, the debate watch party does seem much more fun than your typical overflow room, which usually consists of watching on closed-circuit television a lecture going on 100 feet away.
A friend described "winning the lottery" for the debate as making her feel like Charlie Bucket from Roald Dahl's "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory." With so few golden tickets to go around, they are certainly in high demand. However, instead of sharing it with the world, like the golden ticket winners in Dahl's novel, the holders of these golden tickets seem less likely to reveal their status, due to the jealous feelings others have towards them. Also like Dahl's novel, during the notification process, there seemed to be a state of paranoia. No one seemed to know what was happening. This is and will be the only time during my three-plus years at Dartmouth that there has been such a demand for tickets for any event.
This may sound like the rant of someone who will not be attending the debate. Not so fast, my friend. I am attending the debate as a guest of the Biden for President campaign, which I guess makes me a substantially less evil Veruca Salt, the girl who needed her golden ticket so badly she had an entire factory of workers searching through Wonka Bars for her. I may not get to visit Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, but at least I can say I attended the debate. That is more than you can say for most students, and that simply should not be the case.
