Welcome back to the insanity.

Monday night’s “camp out” for football tickets can only be described as completely and utterly lame. It doesn’t even deserve props for trying.

With the exception of the absurdly irreconcilable issue of parietals, I have never been more frustrated with the University. Camping out for football tickets has been a rich tradition for longer than most people can even remember, and at a school that claims to pride itself on tradition, the lack of respect to this historical custom is deeply disappointing.

The entire lottery process for ticket distribution was confusing, exasperating and very poorly planned. There simply wasn’t enough time to communicate the details or to answer the resulting questions students had. How hard would it have been to send a letter to students during the summer explaining the new system? Oh wait, that would require both effort AND sense.

When my friends and I arrived around 11 p.m., we were greeted with insults and sarcasm from the Stadium ushers as they rudely slammed the gate in our faces. We then had to beg for information that they were reluctant to give. Excuse ME, sir, so sorry to make you do your job.

We were NOT told that in order to purchase tickets together you had to get your lottery tickets together. It was NOT published in The Observer advertisement or the campus mailing, and, contrary to their snide remarks, we were NOT the only ones who didn’t understand. The aimless crowd milling about us were just as clueless, as was the rest of the Stadium staff. To say that one hand didn’t know what the other was doing is the understatement of the year.

If the whole point of a lottery system is to ensure fairness, then this one failed miserably because the order in which we bought our tickets the following morning depended on when we got our lottery tickets. Besides, there was no reason to stay once they announced the “magic number.”

The details were never effectively communicated, but the fundamental problem was that were too many details. When an event that is supposed to be fun becomes too organized and controlled, that takes the spirit out it. The best part of camping out was that it was voluntary and inspired by pure student enthusiasm; it was not dictated or mandated. The spirit of class unity was totally lost in this new process, which is particularly disheartening to us senior guinea pigs.

If the central issue behind the new ticket distribution system was to prevent alcohol use and littering, they could have simply tightened security outside the Joyce Center where the real campouts used to be. And if the University is going to take action on alcohol consumption on this campus, it needs to stop hiding behind inconsistencies and do something that will actually make a difference. Standardize policies among dorms instead feeding the gender double standard. Eliminate the need for binge drinking by providing increased campus activities that people will actually attend. (Note the pathetic turnout of only a handful of students who actually did camp out all night. The administration did a damn fine job of killing what they couldn’t control.)

Spend less time on national image and more time on the students who keep the real tradition of Notre Dame alive.