Rumors that ticket prices at the Iowa State Center are going up are not true, officials said.

Sara Barr, director of marketing for the Iowa State Center, said there is no truth to those rumors.

The source of these rumors could be attributed to an over-allocation of funds to the Government of the Student Body (GSB), David Boike, finance director of GSB, said.

Two years ago, the GSB budget was calculated for up to this fiscal year, Boike said. Full and part-time students were charged the same amount of student activity fees. These fees were essential to calculating the budget.

Since then, the Iowa Board of Regents decided to reduce the amount of student activity fees part-time students pay, resulting in a shortage in the GSB budget, Boike said.

The difference amounted to a shortage of $133,000 causing some concern over possible raised ticket prices at the Iowa State Center.

“Ticket prices will not be raised as long as the budget shortfall is taken care of,” Boike said.

The amount of student discounted tickets sold for performing arts events at Stephens Auditorium will only be affected when there is a popular show, he said.

“If Stomp were to show up here, a lot of students would want to go to it,” Boike said. “But every student discounted ticket sold does not allow a full price ticket to be sold.”

Iowa State Center executive director Mark North said the student discount is only affected when the talent restricts the discount amount offered.

“When Rent came a few years ago, we were allowed to offer only a 25 percent discount,” he said. “This was because they were on the road trying to make money, and they knew the show was popular with students.”

However, those situations are more of the exception than the rule, and tickets offered at a student discount to events at Stephens Auditorium will remain at 50 percent, he said. The funds for this discount are provided by the GSB, North said.

“The Iowa State Center picks up the extra costs not covered by the GSB,” Barr said. “We sell a lot more student tickets than they provide funding for.”

She said they do this because of the large amount of student support they receive.

“The students do take advantage of the GSB funded tickets,” Barr said.

Despite the construction of the Iowa Events Center in Des Moines, North said he is fairly optimistic about the future of the Iowa State Center.

Competition is not expected to be a problem because of the discrepancy between the events held at the two centers, he said.

“The question of competition in the arena itself will only be answered when the [Iowa Events] Center opens up,” North said. “Then we’ll find out if the entertainment market is large enough in this area to support both.”

He said regions with much larger numbers of people, such as Chicago, can afford to have multiple large venues.

The potential loss of money due to student discount tickets is not as important as providing a service to students, Barr said.

“We are here as an educational resource, to enhance education and we see the money we spend on it as money well spent,” Barr said.