Happy KU campers snatch up additional Clinton speech tickets

More seats available today for inaugural Dole Institute lecture

Show up early.

That’s the advice from those who will be distributing the last 5,000 tickets available for former President Clinton’s speech this week in Lawrence. Ticket windows open at 9 a.m. today at Allen Fieldhouse, and the remaining tickets are expected to go fast.

All 5,000 tickets made available Monday to Kansas University students, faculty and staff were gone in little more than an hour.

Campers in the fieldhouse lobby — overflowing into a line that meandered through the fieldhouse lawn, around the entrance to the parking garage and back to the front steps of the Burge Union — made the atmosphere seem more like a prelude to a KU-Missouri basketball game than a lecture from the nation’s 42nd president.

“It’s Late Night (in the Phog) all over again,” said Richard Konzem, interim associate director of the Dole Institute of Politics, for which Clinton is delivering the inaugural lecture.

The subject of Clinton’s lecture, to be delivered at 2:15 p.m. Friday, remains a mystery to event organizers.

High demand

But the mere prospect of seeing and hearing the former president was apparently enough. By 11:15 a.m. Monday, more than 1,700 people had lined up for a chance to grab seats. Though the ticket windows had been scheduled to open at noon, officials relented when they saw the line and started handing out the tickets early. By noon, 3,500 tickets had been disbursed. The remaining 1,500 were gone a half hour later. All people needed was a KU identification card and one of two spoken words: “one” ticket or “two.”

“It’s worth it,” said Steve Lee, a professor who stopped by on his lunch hour and picked up the last two tickets handed out Monday. “You get someone with the stature of Clinton, and it’s best to get him in the biggest venue possible.”

Kansas University juniors Genet Demisashi, Wichita, left, and Marianna Zelenak, Anthony, display their tickets for the inaugural Dole Lecture featuring former President Clinton. The lecture was moved from the Lied Center to Allen Fieldhouse, making more tickets available to the public Monday and today. Clinton will speak Friday at the fieldhouse.

Clinton’s speech, the Dole Institute’s inaugural Dole Lecture, had been slated for the Lied Center, which seats 1,900 people. On Wednesday, an estimated 3,000 people stood in the rain to get tickets from the Lied Center box office on KU’s west campus. Most went home empty-handed. Of the 700 tickets available for the public at the Lied Center, 300 were handed out and an additional 400 were reserved by phone.

The Lied distribution, which lasted less than 20 minutes, exposed the university to criticism and prompted calls to relocate the event to the fieldhouse.

Student tries again

But even that didn’t work for Dan Britton. After falling about 70 people short of scoring tickets last week at the Lied Center — “I was late to class because of that stupid crap,” he said — the KU junior was among those glad to see the speech moved to the fieldhouse.

But even with 5,000 seats up for grabs Monday, Britton found himself watching helplessly as the fieldhouse ticket office closed in front of him — a mere three people away.

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“It’s easier to get a seat for basketball games,” said Britton, who camped for basketball seats during the past two KU seasons. “I’ll come back again, I guess. Hopefully, third time’s a charm.”

Sound issues

Konzem said he already knew the complaints he would be hearing Friday, even after hiring Stage Pro of Kansas City, Mo., to haul in stages, lights and a high-powered sound system for the big speech.

“Sound will be an issue,” said Konzem, who listened to dozens of muffled “Senior Night” speeches during more than two decades as an administrator in KU’s athletic department. “Part of the building will be great, but it’s a building with a pitched roof, and it’s steel. Acoustically, it’s just not the kind of place you have for being able to hear a speaker really well. …

“The sound bounces around in there. Somebody yells, it bounces off one side of the ceiling, bounces to the other, comes back down. It’s not absorbed anyplace … so the very thing that makes it great for basketball — the great noise environment — is what makes it not great for these kind of speech events.”

Former President Clinton’s speech Friday will be delivered from a stage at the north end of Allen Fieldhouse. The “Pay Heed All Who Enter: Beware of the Phog” banner will be behind him, possibly obscured by a curtain.The 700 tickets distributed last week to the public for the Lied Center will be honored for Friday’s speech at the fieldhouse. People with those tickets will be seated in folding chairs on the floor, directly in front of the former president.Others who had tickets for the Lied Center — 1,200 tickets in total for Dole Institute donors, KU officials, legislators, Gov. Kathleen Sebelius’ staff and Cabinet, newspaper publishers and editors, and other members of the working media — will sit on the east side of the fieldhouse, to the president’s left, in sections E, F, G, 4, 5 and 6.The northern end of the fieldhouse will be closed to the public for security reasons.The remaining seats will be occupied by the 10,000 people holding general-admission tickets.Fieldhouse doors will open at 12:30 p.m. Friday. Public access will be available only through the main entrance on the east side of the building, and through one door on the south side, which faces the baseball field.The north doors, facing the parking garage, will be closed for security reasons.