Confusion among the gubernatorial campaigns, campus political organizations and the Student Association resulted in many students having difficulty getting tickets for Monday night’s debate.
The SA sponsored the event, which featured Democratic incumbent Gov. Ronnie Musgrove and Republican challenger Haley Barbour squaring off in McComas Hall auditorium.
The campaigns each had 160 tickets to distribute. McComas Hall auditorium seats about 440 people. MSU and Starkville officials claimed many of the remaining tickets. About 50 tickets were available to general student body. Those became available 8 a.m. Monday and were distributed within a few minutes.
About a dozen students protested the lack of tickets in front of McComas before the debate.
“We showed up at 8:45. (The tickets) were gone,” said Dennis Durham, a senior in political science.
“It was something very important happening. A gubernatorial debate affects not only the state, but also the university,” Durham said.
SA President Josh Blades met with the protesters before the debate. “I told them where all the tickets went. They told me they weren’t protesting the SA. They were protesting the other organizations involved that withheld tickets from the students,” Blades said.
The SA asked for more student tickets, but was rebuffed by the both campaign, Blades said.
“People from Tupelo, Batesville and all over the rest of the Northeast Part of the state and as far away as Meridian contacted our campaign for tickets. We tried our hardest to accommodate everyone we could,” said Musgrove press secretary Andrew Poag in a written statement.
Students were able to get in the building when organizers opened the doors for people to fill unoccupied seats, Blades said.
“I don’t know if they all got seats, but they got in,” he said.
Blades said debate planners chose McComas Hall auditorium because it is the only venue of campus that could both accommodate a large audience, but also have the lighting and acoustic features for a live TV broadcast.
Several college Republicans and Democrats had been under the impression that they would get tickets from the respective campaigns. Upon finding out that they would have to get their tickets elsewhere, most got up early Monday to claim the tickets distributed by the SA, Blades said.
T.J. Harvey, president of the College Republicans, said most members were able to get in.
“Most of them that were really wanting to get in, got in,” Harvey said. “There were things that could have been done differently, both with the campaigns and the SA … but things don’t always work out exactly the way we plan.”
Over 150 students were able to attend a pre-debate barbecue with Barbour, Harvey said. He also several of the over 500 College Republicans on campus were making plans to attend the Oct. 14 debate to be held at Delta State University.
Representatives from the College Democrats and the Barbour campaign did not return phone calls from The Reflector.
2Reflector Newspaper2SORT™2STR
o”