One more note on Palestra seating

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I said almost everything I wanted to say in last week's stories (the news story is here and student reaction is here) on the new seating policy at Penn basketball games. But a late interview brought one more potential problem with the arrangement to my attention: how general-admissions seating makes it much harder to sit with one's friends.

Think about it -- if you want to watch Penn beat Dartmouth on a Saturday night and show up early enough to get good seats, and your friends show up 15 minutes later and are sitting six rows back, there's no guarantee that you'll be able to sit with them, unless you drape a sweatshirt across the seats next to you. And that's hard to do when there are several hundred other screaming, sweaty undergrads clamoring for those same good seats. The only other option is to give up the seats that you arrived early to get, which defeats the whole purpose of general admissions.

The question is how accomodating students will be. I hope that if someone has to get up and use the restroom, or tries to save a seat for a friend who is about to arrive, fans will be understanding and not demand the seat. But you never know.

It's another potential problem in a long list of them, but I still commend the Athletic Department for at least trying something new and not just hoping that students will miraculously start showing up at 6:30.