Drawing a group of 17 students, the office of the student body president held its first town hall meeting Tuesday night to discuss freshman orientation and football ticket distribution.

The office of the president will be holding similar meetings throughout the year to seek input from students.

"We know we were elected to represent the student body, and it's hard to know what each individual is thinking," said student body president Brooke Norton. "We really wanted to have feedback from students."

One student in the audience, Susan Palladino, suggested incorporating a service activity into freshman orientation.

"It's a non-threatening way for students to get together," she said. As an example, Palladino said a brother and sister dorm could do a three-hour service project during orientation weekend.

Student government is currently looking into incorporating service into freshman orientation, according to Norton.

Junior Andrew Deberry suggested freshmen might prefer events that involved actually talking to other freshmen, instead of quickly meeting multiple people.

Other members of the audience expressed concern that many activities involve an entire male dorm and an entire female dorm doing something together. Male dorms should also plan events with other male dorms, and female dorms with other female dorms, according to senior Tyler Jackson. He explained that the way orientation is currently set up, students only meet students of the same gender who live in their dorm.

"I don't think you get the friendships you could get," Jackson said.

Sophomore Kevin Wolf said the problems with freshman orientation could stem from each dorm planning its own events independently.

"It depends so much on what your dorm orientation commissioner and your rector decide on," he said, added that freshmen in different dorms are "on unequal ground" as a result.

Students at the town hall meeting also discussed possible changes to football ticket distribution.

"This is the fourth year in a row that something different has been done," said student body vice president Brian Moscona. He added that so far, feedback about this year's distribution system has been positive.

Many students have expressed an interest in general admission seating, said Norton, but she added that the University's risk management attorneys say that everyone must have an assigned seat.

While assigned seating is not debatable, the payment plans for the tickets could change. The audience unanimously endorsed the idea of paying for tickets on their student accounts.

Students also said it was a hassle for them to organize their friends to get a lottery number on one day, and then to purchase the tickets on another day.

Fitzmaurice suggested changing the system so that those students who wanted to sit together did not have to get consecutive lottery numbers. Instead, each student in a group could get an individual number, and the person in the group with the highest lottery number could purchase the tickets for the rest of the group.

That system might be better, according to Wolf, especially considering that most students care primarily about sitting with their friends.

Furthermore, it was particularly difficult to purchase tickets on a day when class was in session, according to Palladino.

"I think it was a lot of juggling. For freshmen, it must have been mind boggling," she said. "It's ridiculous to have to skip a class or show up late because you're picking up football tickets."

She suggested having students pick up their tickets on a Saturday, although Norton said the ticket office prefers each class to have its own separate pick up day.

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