UCLA Recreation will now foot the bill of Pauley Opening Madness and the UCLA Homecoming Festival without the help of admission fees, as recent student feedback motivated officials to eliminate the original $5 entry fee.
The events are scheduled for Nov. 2 and will consist of student group-run carnival-style booths and festivities to celebrate the reopening of Pauley Pavilion.
Students or parents who have already purchased a ticket can get a refund at the location where they bought it, said Kenn Heller, associate director of innovation initiatives for UCLA Recreation.
“We were getting responses like, “˜I really would like to go, but right now even $5 is kind of a challenge,'” Heller said. “Really at the core, we wanted to make the event open to students, so we said, “˜Let’s remove that block.'”
Though the event is now free, students interested in attending the event still need to pick up one of about 10,000 available tickets at the Central Ticket Office by showing their BruinCard, Heller said.
Claire Kolling, a third-year English student, said she is happy about the change.
“Coming from a college student on a budget of $20 a day, it’s awesome,” she said.
The original admission fee was in part to attract attendees, Heller said.
“Sometimes when something is free, people don’t place a value on it,” Heller said.
The admission fee would have supplemented the cost of the Homecoming Festival, which is estimated to cost $12,500, Heller said.
UCLA Recreation already had the budget to fully finance the event, he added.
He said he did not know the total cost of Pauley Opening Madness.
The Homecoming Committee plans to give out about 500 VIP tickets to students leading up to the event, said Kaitlyn Williams, co-director of the committee. The tickets come with courtside seats for the Pauley reopening event, a post-event gathering in one of the new areas of Pauley Pavilion, among other things, Williams said.
The committee has already given out 50 tickets and plans to award 50 more this weekend.
The VIP tickets are not for sale, Williams added.
While the event is primarily meant for students, Heller said the first 1,000 parents of UCLA students who are attending UCLA Parents’ Weekend can receive a ticket.
Contributing reports by Dylan Nguyen, Bruin contributor.