A few years ago, when I first learned student basketball tickets were going electronic, I was a little wary. I questioned the ease of selling tickets but was reassured you could transfer your tickets to another student or print them out. This is true.

However, three years later, I find myself wanting to actually do this for the first time. I got onto cyclones.com and logged into my account. As I was about to hit the print button, however, I noticed the disclaimer asking for my approval for a $2 charge to my account for the transfer.

Wait, didn’t I already buy this ticket? Why should I be paying another $2? At first I thought the charge was only if I were electronically transferring the ticket to another student’s account. But no, there is actually an additional $2 charge to print out MY ticket with MY paper and MY ink.

So what is the purpose of this charge? Well, I emailed the athletic director, Jamie Pollard, to find out.

Pollard said the money is charged to the university by the company that handles the electronic ticketing and the cost is then transferred to us. He went on to say that part of the reason student tickets have not gone up for the past four years was due, in part, to the costs saved from not printing paper tickets.

However, I do not feel Pollard’s reasoning on not raising ticket prices is only due to the savings they have gained from the electronic system. For years, the $99 season tickets have been available to the public for men’s basketball games. The Kansas game was the season’s first “sold out” basketball game, even though large sections of Hilton weren’t even filled. This past fall is the first time Iowa State has had attendance of more than 50,000 at every home football game, and part of that was most likely due to the huge marketing push and reduced ticket prices for multiple games.

Iowa State is not a huge school with a nationally known program. We will not sell out every game year after year. Until that happens, unless the athletic department wants to see attendance suffer, ticket prices will not go up.

Finally, Pollard said he received an overwhelmingly positive response to the electronic ticketing and my complaint about the additional fee is the first he has received.

Personally, I do like the electronic tickets. Without paper tickets I have one less thing to misplace or forget. However, the problem of additional hidden fees seems to be a bit of an epidemic for this university.

After spending about $900 on athletic tickets during my time here at Iowa State, it is vexing that I should have to pay an additional $2 when I was just trying to give away a women’s basketball ticket.

The fact that my complaint was the first he has heard isn’t surprising. Most students, understandably, see the charge, grumble about it and click the approve button. We all have busy schedules and, in the scheme of things, $2 isn’t much.

While it isn’t much, we still shouldn’t have to pay it. When I asked for my friends’ opinions on the matter through my Facebook account, I received multiple replies expressing their dislike of the practice within minutes.

So, fellow sports lovers, I would encourage you to send Pollard an email at [email protected]. I know we’re all busy, but student feedback is necessary to truly gauge the success of the new program, and if we only grumble to ourselves and our friends, it can’t change. Considering the athletic department has found the money to add on to the football training facility and build a new athletic facility, I think they can find a way to absorb the cost of the transfer fee.