College Ball- Access Tickets
What do we mean by access tickets?
The term ‘access ticket’ relates to a limited number discounted tickets that are open to students from but not limited to underprivileged socio-economic backgrounds as well as students that are currently experiencing financial difficulties (regardless of their background).
What is socio-economic disadvantage and how does this affect students?
A student’s socio-economic status relates to both financial income and their social background. Socio-economic status may be perceived as ‘disadvantaged’ due to numerous factors that have impacted how someone has grown up. For example, students from working class, care-experienced, and estranged backgrounds may be perceived as ‘disadvantaged’.
How does this impact student life?
- A person’s socio-economic background might impact the extent to which their family can help out with extra expenses and the extent to which someone may have a ‘safety net’ if they come into financial distress whilst at university. - The central university and colleges offer financial assistance for students. For example, fees and funding (central university service) provides a hardship fund of up to £3000 for all UK students and also provides specific bursaries dedicated for care-experienced students.
- Despite this, within the current economic climate, for many students, funding barely covers only the essentials of rent and food costs. This makes it more difficult for students to find the money to spend on additional expenses such as college balls.
It is this context that highlights the value of initiatives such as discounted tickets to ensure that students from across the university have access to college balls.
How to fund discounted tickets
Every college will adopt their own way of sourcing funding to cover the cost of providing discounted tickets for students. Some of the possible routes to explore are:
1. Source the cost of access tickets from increasing the price of guest and/or alumni tickets
2. Source funding via your college
Historically, there has been a precedent of colleges providing a block grant to students to fund the cost of discounted tickets. This is usually done via a meeting with the domestic bursar.
- Set up a meeting with your domestic bursar and present your case to them. Much like a rent-negotiation meeting, you will need to present your case with evidence to support it. It might be useful to think about what other members of the college staff might be useful to get on side to help with supporting you, this might include your college Welfare lead.
- Gathering evidence to present to your college might come in many forms, but this is just a few examples of things that might be useful:
- Gathering data from your JCR/ MCR to record the numbers of students that would benefit from a discounted tickets to give you a quantitative data set. Get feedback from these students to provide personal testimony to the benefits of implementing an access ticket scheme.
- Pass a motion through your JCR to demonstrate support and demand for a financially accessible ball to put pressure on the college to respond.
- Get members of your JCR on board to help you out in the meeting, this may include class officers or the JCR President who have direct contact with students that would benefit from this scheme.
- Use other colleges as examples of good practice to show that there is a precedent for this measure throughout the university.
3. Source funding via JCR
- Although it may prove a challenge to get them on board initially, the JCR and its budget is a great source to fund discounted tickets. In order to secure funding, this might involve presenting a motion to your JCR that outlines the importance of financial accessibility that demonstrates to students why they should the cause.
4. Look to alternative funds (does your JCR have a budget for its class officer?)
- For many college JCRs, there are individual sources of funding for different ‘liberation’ or ‘representation’ officers. You could reach out to the officer that covers socio-economic disadvantage to see if they would support you with providing some of their budget to fund access tickets.
What to think about when deciding numbers and prices for access tickets
When considering the logistics of an access ticket scheme, the two questions that arise are- how much should the ticket cost and how many tickets should be made available?
An example of good practice:
A college ball committee had 300 student tickets available of which full priced tickets were £120. The committee had an access tickets scheme that offered 40 of them at half price to eligible students. This therefore cost £2,400- which was sourced directly from the college.
This example works well in both ticket numbers and price. Half-price is a good discount to aim for as it is significant enough to have a real impact on students. Also, given that it is hard to set a number for what can be considered as ‘accessible’, half-price works as a good baseline to aim for.
Scalability
For balls such as a commemoration one which cost a lot to attend, it may be more beneficial for students to increase the discount of an access ticket from half-price to more a more substantive discount.
Equally, for a ball with a large number of tickets, try to ensure that there is a significant number of tickets that are discounted.
From the characteristics of your ball, try and gauge what would be most effective for students and scale numbers and price accordingly.
Best methods to advertise the tickets
It may be difficult to explain to students what access tickets are and why they are important to have. You may also be nervous about how to advertise access tickets to students in a way that isn’t invasive or insensitive.
Here are some ways that might be useful for framing what access tickets are to your JCR:
- State the values that you want to be upheld by your ball committee and the event. This might include inclusivity and equality.
- Describe what an access ticket is: a discounted ticket that is intended to ensure that all students, irrespective of their financial situation have the ability to attend a college ball.
- Explain why this is important: in the current economic climate, it is becoming increasingly more difficult more students to allocate their budget on non-essential expenses- a college ball ticket being one such thing. Irrespective of this, for students from low-income backgrounds, student loans and bursaries may be the only source of income that they have which might only stretch to cover rent and other essential costs.
Creating a selection process
Measures of eligibility
There are many methods that you can adopt to select students to receive access tickets. You might put some measures of eligibility in. For example:
- All students a bursary or income grant are automatically eligible for an access ticket
- All students that self-declare as from a low-income household are eligible
Despite the value of these measures for deciding whether someone is eligible for an access ticket, it might be useful to expand upon these characteristics to include students that have found themselves in financial difficulty- a measure that does not relate to their socio-economic background. This could be worded as: Students affected by a recent change in financial circumstance.
Priority level
If ticket numbers for access tickets is restricted, you may wish to put in a process of selection that prioritises students by need. For example:
- Get students to apply for an access ticket by declaring their eligibility to one of the characteristics outlined above.
- Get students to declare their priority level for an access ticket:
- I will not be able to afford a ball ticket without a discount ticket
- I will struggle to afford a ball ticket without a discount or will have to go without necessities to afford a full price ball ticket
- I would have to budget very carefully to be able afford a full price ball ticket
- I am able to buy a full price ticket but a discount would help
This self-declaration can help with ensuring that the students most in need receive a ticket.
Application panel
If you employ a method that prioritises students by need, you will have to create a panel that allows you to assess applications and make decisions on the students that receive an access ticket.
Selecting a committee
A panel for assessing applications might consist of 1 member of the ball committee and an external member. This external member may be someone who supports students from low-income backgrounds, for example, the JCR class officer. It might also be worthwhile asking if a college staff member could help out with this process and be on the panel.
Confidentiality
It is essential that you are transparent to students about how the information that they submit on their form will be handled.
Ensure that:
- The information that a student sends is read only by the members of the selection panel.
- When applications have been processed, all information that students have provided is permanently deleted.
- Students are fully aware of the process and how their information will be handled
Getting the word out
When advertising access tickets, ensure that all students are made aware of them.
Post the application form to your common room page and so that any student can apply if they feel like they would benefit from the scheme.
If you are using a ticket platform such as fixr, it might be useful to provide people who are able to purchase an access ticket with a discount code that they can apply to their ticket during the checkout. Ensure that whatever method you use is easy for students, so the process is stress free when tickets are released.
If you need help setting up an access ticket scheme or have any questions about the information provided, please contact vpugedu@oxfordsu.ox.ac.uk.