Penn’s Class Board 2026 rolled out new ticketing and event procedures for Feb Club, a month-long February social tradition for senior undergraduates.
This year’s Feb Club is the first to include free events and a lottery system for purchasing tickets. Students have previously raised concerns about the tradition’s limited ticket supply and steep prices.
In an interview with The Daily Pennsylvanian, Wharton senior and Class Board 2026 Vice President of External Affairs Bruno Basner characterized the former ticketing system — which relied on weekly drops — as “very chaotic.”
Basner said that the structure favored students who were able to quickly log on to the ticketing system, TicketLeap. He added that that, “if you missed the first 10 minutes of that drop, you don’t really have a chance of getting any of those spots.”
According to Basner, Class Board 2026 aimed to address those concerns by introducing a revised ticketing system that allows seniors to indicate their event preferences in advance. Under the new model, students may designate four preferred events. 70% of tickets for each event are allocated through an early lottery for those who prioritized it, while the remaining tickets are released through general admission.
Basner emphasized that his team was able to take the responses from the lottery system, examine which events seniors prioritized most, and contact the venue to gauge if there was capacity for the demand.
“That was something that previous class boards were never really able to gauge, just because they didn't know ahead of time — how many people would want the event before ticketing drops,” Basner told the DP. “That’s definitely one of the successful aspects of this new ticketing system.”
Event accessibility was similarly a focus during the board’s planning, especially with regard to how many free events were being offered.
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College senior and Class Board 2026 member Shikhar Gupta called the lack of free events in past years a “red flag,” particularly for seniors who may not have been able to afford tickets.
“One of the priorities that we had this year was to absolutely offer multiple free events,” Gupta said, adding that several events scheduled throughout the month do not require tickets.
Gupta, who described the month as an opportunity for students to “celebrate the end of their time at Penn with their friends,” highlighted that this year’s goal was to ensure there would be “no barrier to experiencing at least one Feb Club event.”
The board also increased the number of events with capacities exceeding 500 attendees, according to Basner.
“One of the difficult things for any class board is you’re servicing 2500 people, all with differing preferences, so we really tried our best when coming up with events,” he said. “Our intent is to give people the highest chance possible that they can attend Feb Club events and then try and make it as fair as possible.”
Gupta and Basner both pointed to policy revisions with the goal of improving communication. Basner told the DP that a new Feb Club website was created to centralize event information, schedules, and ticketing information. The board also created a chat on the messaging app GroupMe to facilitate ticket resales between seniors.
Basner said that even if students originally failed to procure tickets, it is “not unthinkable” to purchase a ticket from the resale. He mentioned that the ability to still attend events after the conclusion of general admission was “one of the things that we were most concerned about well before we even started brainstorming.”
One senior — who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation — said her “frustration” this year stemmed from the difficulty of attending events with friends under the new ticketing system. She told the DP that the ticketing structure often required students to “pick and choose between the major events that every single person would want to go to.”
While the senior called the free events “so cute” — referencing a “Puppy Party” and an arts and crafts event — she clarified that the large events are what “every person is still going to want to go to.”
She suggested that future Feb Club organizers could prioritize fewer large-scale events with broader access rather than daily programming.
“We get the concept of having an event every single day, but we would rather have a few really good events that every single person or majority of people would be able to have access to,” she said.
Gupta said expanding accessible feedback channels for seniors will be a key area of focus moving forward, while Basner suggested future class boards could continue exploring ways to increase access and capacity.
“We’ve definitely made steps in the right direction, but there’s always, always ways to improve that,” Basner said. “I challenge next year’s class board to figure out a way to make it even more accessible and have people have even more fun during Feb Club.”
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Senior reporter Ananya Karthik covers central administration and can be reached at karthik@thedp.com. At Penn, she studies communication and economics. Follow her on X @ananyaakarthik.
