Lunden Admits Giving Final Clubs Special Football Ticket Privileges

Final club members have received special football ticket privileges throughout this fall, Frank O. Lunden, H.A.A. Ticket Manager, admitted yesterday.

Under an arrangements which allowed stewards of several clubs to present up to 18 bursar's cards, members could purchase blocs of choice tickets before the regular student sales began.

Thomas D. Bolles, Director of Athletics, claimed last night that Lunden's admission was the first he had heard of any favoritism to clubs. "Jeff Kalmus came to me today with some evidence that this procedure was going on at the ticket office. I asked him to type up his material and leave it for me to study. I didn't have any idea that he was going to release it tonight."

Geoffrey M. Kalmus '56, a staff member of WHRB, had investigated the matter and had questioned Lunden about alleged ticket benefits to club members. Kalmus said Lunden admitted that all this term he had allowed clubs which requested seats together to buy them in advance. "I'm not trying to conceal anything," Lunden said last night after the facts were revealed. "A few clubs asked for this accommodation at the beginning of the year, and I gave it. I only considered it as slight generosity."

Lunden added that this was the first year since the war that such a practice was permitted. Undergraduate sources said last night, however, that special club seating had been standard procedure, at least as long as they have been in college.

Bolles and Lunden both said that there would be no further concessions made to final club members. "It is certainly not my policy to favor any or all of the clubs," Bolles said.

Lunden explained that before the war there were regular club sections assigned to each group. The privilege was suspended when graduates began abusing it, Lunden said, and was never reinstated.

This year, he claimed, it was a much less formal arrangement. "The boy who was in here from WHRB said D.U. men were all sitting on the 50 yard line for the Princeton game. This is untrue: D.U. was one of the clubs that didn't get any favors," Lunden said. He declined to name which of the clubs were involved, but said, "when the fellow from Phoenix came in for his Yale tickets, I told him we couldn't give him the favor this time." The arrangement will absolutely not be resumed next year, Lunden said, "since all students are supposed to be equal."