The Badger Herald’s “Naughty List”

Naming Names

On Sunday December 5th at 9:00 PM CT 5,800 tickets for the 2011 Rose Bowl went on sale for University of Wisconsin students. 20 minutes later they were gone. Shortly after that multiple posts went up on facebook marketplace looking to sell these student tickets for outrageous profits. Face value for these tickets is $150 and some are going for $400.

In response to such posts, The Badger Herald, one of the student newspapers at the University of Wisconsin, wrote up a “Naughty List” of 
people (first and last names) who posted their student Rose Bowl tickets online: http://badgerherald.com/oped/2010/12/05/the_worst_people_on_.bak.php They have obviously taken heat for this but not only does the site remain up, but they encourage others to send in additional names to be added.

Crossing the Line

At some points during their rant they do seem to get a little out of hand. For example, saying “...there is a special place in Hell for people who buy Rose Bowl tickets with the sole intention of profiting from them” seems to be a bit over the line. For a newspaper to say that these kids are going to hell for this is pretty extreme even though what they did is inexcusable, but the overall message of the article still remains the same, calling out those who have done something morally wrong.

Saying What We’re Thinking

Although a lot of criticism seems to be coming towards The Badger Herald, I believe that they are indeed doing the right thing. With about 40,000 undergrads at the University of Wisconsin and only 5,800 available student tickets there were obviously going to be kids who didn’t receive tickets who wanted to, but to lose out to kids who are only looking to take advantage is disturbing. These kids definitely needed to be called out for what they are doing because this type of behavior should not be encouraged. Things must be done to prevent such events from occurring again. As the article says, having to pick the tickets up in Pasadena, CA where the Rose Bowl is played certainly will stop this from happening again.

It is very sad on multiple levels that this has happened and how students are taking advantage of other students. Such kids are backed in a corner because they may have already bought their plane tickets and now have to get a ticket to the game or else the whole trip is for nought. Going online to the ticket selling website for the sole purpose of reselling them for a ridiculous profit was absolutely disrespectful to the other students and just flat out the wrong thing to do. Hopefully these kids will be somewhat “black listed” for what they have done and feel embarrassed for having their names posted online for everyone to see.