About 3,000 people lined up Wednesday morning outside Kansas University’s Lied Center, intent on snagging tickets to Bill Clinton’s May 21 speech.

All but about 300 went away rain-soaked, empty-handed and ticked off.

“This is ridiculous,” said a disgusted Connie Meyer, who waited in line with her husband, Larry, for almost four hours before being told there were no more tickets. The giveaway lasted about 20 minutes.

“They came out this morning and said there were only going to be about 700 tickets available,” Larry Meyer said. “So they handed out 350 cards to the people who were here because you could only get two tickets apiece.

“You had to have a card to get a ticket. Well, we were like 176 or 178 and we didn’t get tickets. That doesn’t add up.”

The Meyers were among a group of angry ticket-seekers who confronted Richard Konzem, associate director at the Dole Institute of Politics, shortly after he announced all the tickets had been given away.

Many in the group accused Konzem of poor planning and catering to the well-connected. They called for moving Clinton’s lecture to Allen Fieldhouse, a much larger venue. The Lied Center seats about 1,900; Allen Fieldhouse, 16,300.

Meeting with reporters afterward, Konzem said officials from both KU and the Dole Institute had decided against moving the event to Allen Fieldhouse.

“Mainly for two reasons: acoustics and security,” he said.

Limited seating

An estimated 2,500 people stand in line for tickets to hear President Clinton speak May 21 at the Lied Center. Only about 300 people left Wednesday with tickets.

Konzem defended the ticket-allocation process, noting that he had, in fact, handed out 350 cards at about 8:30 a.m.

“When I got to about 200, I told people there was a good chance they would not get tickets,” he said. “And then after 350, I went down the line and told about every 15th or 20th person — wherever people were huddled up — that they may as well go home because there weren’t going to be enough tickets.”

Asked why the Meyers didn’t get tickets, Konzem guessed they had lost out to people who called the Lied Center for tickets.

“The tickets — those for people in line and for those who called in — came out of the same pool,” he said.

Also, he said, many of those in line erroneously assumed that tickets would be handed out in much the same way that students are admitted to Allen Fieldhouse before men’s basketball games.

“At Allen Fieldhouse only one person from a group has to be there at any one time. But when the doors open, everybody in the group gets in,” Konzem said. “We didn’t do that. We only gave cards to the people who were actually there. So a lot of people assumed or thought they were, say, 176th in line, when, in fact, they were the 176th ‘group’ in line and had a lot more than 176 people in front of them.”

In any case, Konzem said no one in front of the Meyers got more than two tickets.

About 1,200 tickets were reserved for Dole Institute donors, staff and volunteers; state legislators and spouses; the governor’s office and cabinet officials; university officials; student leaders; and media.

The first several rows are set aside for students in KU’s political science and history honors programs.

Richard Konzem, left, associate director of the Dole Institute of Politics, is surrounded by a group of frustrated ticket-seekers, including Matt Moeder, a KU freshman from Overland Park, right.

“Clinton asked that we do it that way. He wants students in front,” Konzem said. “But we’d already planned on doing that, so that wasn’t a change.”

Konzem didn’t know how many tickets were given to those who called the Lied Center. But a meter on the university’s telephone system, he said, showed that 65,817 calls were made to the ticket office between 11 a.m. and noon. Most were unsuccessful.

“Because of the in-person demand we could only put two people on the phones,” Konzem said.

Long wait

Waiting in line outside the Lied Center, dozens of ticket-seekers used their cell phones to call the ticket office.

“All you get is a busy signal,” said Amanda Mahoney, a KU student from Eden Prairie, Minn.

6News video: President Clinton’s lecture is a hot-ticket item Lied Center of Kansas Bill Clinton biography

Asked why he hadn’t defused the crowd’s hope of getting tickets by announcing on Monday or Tuesday that only 700 tickets would be available, Konzem explained that donors, legislators and university officials had been given a noon Monday deadline for reserving tickets.

“It took until late Tuesday to get things sorted out. So up until that point, we didn’t know how many tickets would be available,” he said. “I didn’t want to tell people there would be a thousand tickets if we really had 700.”

Konzem said advertising for Clinton’s appearance stressed that seating would be limited.

Tyler Longpine, a 21-year-old political science major at KU, was first in line.

“Actually, I’m part of a group — four of us,” said Longpine, who is from Hays. “We’ve been here since nine o’clock Monday night.”

Longpine, whose two tickets are in the first balcony, front-row center, said he had no hard feelings about his wait or the seats he got.

“Hey, it’s not every day you get to hear a president speak,” he said.