Ticket Snafus Confound Returning Alumnus

Helmut W. Schumann '41 pulled out all the stops yesterday to get tickets to events marking his alma mater's 350th birthday. And although not everyone was as successful as Shumann, who told a clerk he endowed a chair, workers at the Holyoke Ticket Center said others tried just as hard to get the tickets they wanted.

Organizers estimated that nearly half of the more than 1000 designated class representatives who arrived here yesterday weren't satisfied with their tickets to celebration events and tried to swap them for others or to get more.

Alumni yesterday complained that the University did not notify them when tickets they requested could not be granted. Instead, the University assigned tickets to less popular symposia and events.

Alumni said they did not know that they would not receive the tickets they requested until they picked up their packets when they arrived, often after traveling great distances.

"We just spent two days driving--what do we do now?" said Jane Wulsin, who said she and her husband, Eugene Wulsin '43, drove from Cincinnati and received about half of the tickets they requested in May.

Officials did not keep count of the people who tried to get tickets to some of the 106 symposia, various entertainment events or addresses, but ticket clerks at Holyoke Center said they were swamped with requests for tickets from 7:30 a.m. to 10 p.m.

Tickets to several entertainment events, the addresses by University President Derek C. Bok and Secretary of State George P. Shultz and a small number of less popular symposia remained available yesterday, said 350th Ticket manager Dan Salera.

But the remaining tickets satisfied few disgruntled alumni, most of whom want to attend some of the bigname events.

Although Schumann received the tickets he wanted to "Ultimate Physical Theories," a symposia to be lead by Higgins Professor of Physics Sheldon Glashow, clerks told most who complained that there weren't any tickets left.

"Our best advice to people is if they don't have tickets, then just go to the symposia they want to attend and wait," said Sarah Laskin '89, a ticket clerk.

Tickets are only valid until 10 minutes beforethe scheduled start of symposia, after which timeofficials said they would open up the event togeneral admission.

Officially, tickets to 150 events, includingthe 106 symposia, were available on afirst-come-first-served basis with specialconsideration given to class representatives.Clerks said that many of the worst rows were forthose who ordered tickets shortly after symposiawere announced in the May-June issue of HarvardMagazine.

Ticket Manager Salera said alumni were given nospecial consideration based on their generosity toHarvard. "If they tell me they are going to callso-and-so, I say go ahead, because it won't makeany difference.