The Oxford Union will be implementing a new queueing system for Tuesday’s ‘Must Rhodes Fall’ debate and other popular events this term in response to issues with the European Union debate in Michaelmas.
Jack Lennard, press officer for the Union said, “The Oxford Union regularly hosts some of the most fascinating and appealing discussions and speakers in Oxford. After listening to feedback from the last term, we made it clear that we intended to overhaul access protocols for our more popular events. With this new queueing system, we hope to give our members a fairer chance to see who they want than ever before. We hope to fully monitor the success of this trial, and work with our members to find a permanent solution, whether this system or a variation, that achieves this goal.”
Under the new system, 200 free tickets will be available for collection from 11am the day before the event, with every member entitled to pick up a ticket for themselves and two other members. In order to pick up tickets for another member, one must have the other person’s membership card with one.
250 seats will still be available on a first-come-first-served basis the evening of the event itself.
If a ticket holder is not in her seat by 7.30pm, her place will be given to someone else in the queue—with updates on the size of the queue to be regularly provided on the Facebook event page.
Jake Olenick, a first year Physics and Philosophy student at Exeter, told Cherwell that he thinks the changes will be positive, saying, “[The new system] seems like a pretty good idea to me. One of the biggest problems on the EU debate queue was one person standing in for a bunch of others, but with this system you can only get a spot for up to 2 other people, so it limits that sort of problem. Overall, I’m thinking it’ll be a much better queue than last time.”
