This football season, SGA’s Organizational Seating Program introduced a new block seating system in Jordan-Hare Stadium.
It is a “competitive, academic incentive-based system used to promote and determine reserved organizational seating at football games,” according to Brock Hendon, co-director of Organizational Seating Program.
John Headlee, co-director of Organizational Seating Program, said he is happy with the results of block seating following the first game.
“We are very pleased with how block seating is operating so far,” said Headlee. “We feel as though we have found a system that best benefits the student body and student organizations.”
Hendon said he encourages all Auburn University organizations to participate in the competition.
For this academic year, the competition is based solely on organizational GPAs, and the GPAs will be averaged and used for ranking purposes for the fall 2016 football season, according to Hendon.
“In order to apply for block seating, organizations submit a list of members and their GPAs from fall and spring semester,” Headlee said. “Once all the grades are in, organizations are ranked by highest GPA.”
Headlee said, to determine how many rows an organization receives, they take the number of members that applied and multiply that number by 1.5. That number will be how many rows that organization receives.
The block seating system, however, has received mixed reviews among students.
Christopher Houseman, Delta Sigma Pi chapter president, said he was disappointed that the fraternity lost its block seating following the first game.
“We lost our blocking seating this week due to not having all of our seats filled one hour before the kickoff,” said Houseman, “In my opinion, that is absurd. It was an 11 a.m. game, and many of our members had family in town and could not arrive one hour before kickoff.”
SGA’s Organizational Seating Program will continue with its policies laid out in the block seating contract.
“As far as keeping the rows, organizations must fill the block an hour before the game and maintain the block throughout the game,” Headlee said. “This is also outlined in the contract.”
After an organization loses its seating, the organization with the next highest GPA that signed the block seating contract for the football season gets that spot, according to Hendon.
Despite these policies, Houseman still disagreed.
“We did have every single spot filled when the game started,” Houseman said. “I see no benefit in having every spot filled one hour before the game as long as they are in fact filled and every wristband is utilized.”
Hendon said in order to participate in the competition, the contract, available on SGA’s website, must be signed and submitted to SGA’s office.
“An organization must submit an Excel spreadsheet roster listing the first name, last name, email address and student ID number for all members in the organization who want to participate in organizational seating,” Hendon said.
Following the JSU game, six organizations lost their block seating for failing to fulfill the rules expressed in the contract, according to Hendon.
Houseman said he hopes there are changes to next year’s contract.
“My experience: terrible,” Houseman said. “This contract needs to be re-written next year, because now we have no block seating.”
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