Bridge to Clemson students were initially ineligible to qualify for receiving any single-game football lottery tickets, forcing the Athletics department to reissue tickets later.

Bridge students received an email on Aug. 28 informing them that they did not qualify for single-game tickets, despite the Athletics website stating otherwise.

Bridge students received another email that addressed the mistake the next day. The email apologized for the error and stated the students were eligible and that they would be reassigned single-game lottery tickets once the issue had been resolved.

The ticket office and Clemson Undergraduate Student Government were made aware of the situation on the night of Aug. 28, according to Jeff Kallin, senior associate athletic director for communications in the Athletic department.

In a phone interview with The Tiger, Kallin said that this mistake only impacted around 500 Bridge students and that students would be able to find tickets from the lottery in their student accounts within the next 12 hours.

“Bridge students are very important to us, and we understand how important the football games are to all Clemson students. This was anything but intentional,” Kallin told The Tiger. “Consistent communication between departments is key for issues like this to be resolved quickly and efficiently.”

While a mistake like this has not happened before in the Clemson Athletics Department, Kallin stated it was a result of human error. He mentioned that during the process of manually transferring information between departments, the tickets for Bridge students were marked as ineligible when they should have been marked as eligible.

The lottery tickets that Bridge students received after the fact were pulled from tickets set aside that are meant to be sold the day of a football game, along with tickets usually held back in anticipation of possible mistakes or transfer issues for games.

“In total, every student who requested a game ticket received at least one in the lottery — There were an average of 10,806 requests for around 4,000 tickets each week. Furthermore, 99% of seniors received their first choice,” Kallin told The Tiger.

“Long story short, this issue has already been resolved,” Kallin said.