It’s no secret that students already pay a discounted price when going to their school’s sporting events, but should they even have to pay at all? Of course, there needs to be a money flow in order for the facilities and other expenses to be kept up, but are student ticket sales a significant amount or does fundraising cover the costs?

Recently, the Bulldog Bulletin’s Twitter page put out three polls for students to answer. The questions asked in these polls were:

• Do you go to most of Lakeview’s sporting events?
• Would you go to more of our sporting events if thye were free?
• Which sporting evnt do you go to the least?

For the first question, 58 percent of the students answered “no,” which isn’t a surprise since the only big sport seems to be football. However, the response to the second question was an overwhelming “yes.” The polls make it look like a majority of the student’s would go to free games; however, only 26 people participated in the poll. When asked at school if they would go to more sporting events if they were free the popular response was negative. Students gave reasons such as “I don’t even like sports” and “I’d rather spend my money on food.” Although these answers are reasonable for teenagers, these conflicting opinions do not help decide if students should get in for free.

There are benefits to this idea and many underclassmen agree that this is a good idea. If students are already not going to games then getting in for free wouldn’t hurt the school any because there is no money coming in to begin with! Underclassmen, like eigth and ninth graders, who do not have a job would be more likely to stop by a game if they didn’t have to worry about money to get in. At football games, the two biggest attractions are the halftime show and the concession stands, and who blames them? It’s basically the American way to eat while watching sports. So, if students did not have to pay to get into the game, they will have more money to spend on their beloved food and the organizations that depend on raising funds from concession stand sales would benefit.

Another option for students getting into sports events for free would be to have a pep club. Now, students who actively participated in supporting school events around Cortland would be admitted into games for free. This gives students an incentive to show more school spirit and maybe even draw in larger crowds to the games. How exactly this would work is debatable and it would have to be figured out by authority figures, but it isn’t a bad idea at all. Isn’t the whole point of sporting events to show school spirit, not make money? What school wouldn’t want an increased level of school pride? Of course, this decision would have to be talked over by the people in charge, but starting the conversation is important. This idea could be a whole new era for the Lakeview school district and maybe other schools in the area would even follow!

Let’s start the discussion, do you think students should get into sporting events for free?