The biggest party to hit Fairfield University and access to Ticketmaster were blocked on the University network, preventing students from using the FUSA sponsored pre-sale code this past Thursday.
A University email sent out on Monday by Vice President for Student Affairs Thomas Pellegrino, however, explained the reasons behind the error message and said that the school was not at fault.
Word that Boston Barstool Sports had chosen Fairfield U and Sacred Heart for their Barstool Blackout Foam Party tour spread over the past two weeks.
Because the event is being held at Webster Bank Arena, the tickets are open to anyone. The FUSA-sponsored pre-sale code increased students’ chances of scoring a ticket to the popular event, a perk that FUSA President Rob Vogel’13 said he has been talking to Barstool about for months.
“Rumors that the Fairfield server was purposely blocking Ticketmaster because they did not endorse the Foam Party spread throughout the townhouses on Thursday afternoon,” according to Matt Watanabe ‘12.
Watanabe said he and his friend Matthew Levinson ‘13 received a message that said “access forbidden by server” and quickly drove to a friend at the beach’s home to use their WiFi. But the reasons for the website block were unknown.
“It just would not make sense for Fairfield University to block students from buying tickets after FUSA had worked with Barstool to arrange the event … It would be of no benefit to the University,” Vogel said.
Rev. Paul J. Fitzgerald, S.J, senior vice president for Academic Affairs, did not know what the server error message was about, but he did comment on the fiercely anti-Fairfield administration article posted by Barstool.
The posting portrayed the University’s rumored website blockage as “Hitler-like,” even saying, “Are you sh***ing me Fairfield? What is this Nazi Germany?” A Nazi propaganda poster was embedded in the article.
Fitzgerald was angered and hurt by the Barstool article, saying, “Many of the blog posts are reprehensible and should be condemned as hate speech. … My goodness, the anti-Semitic accusations about Fairfield are so wrong.”
President Rev. Jeffery von Arx, S.J., Dean of Students Karen Donoghue, and Steve Dailey from Computer and Networking Services (C&NS) sought to correct these rumors.
“Fairfield University did not block the Ticketmaster site. We would never arbitrarily block a website to stop students from purchasing tickets,” said Donoghue. She went further to state, “After speaking with him [Steve Dailey at C&NS], it appears this site is actually blocking Fairfield University.”
Von Arx confirmed: “it is important to set the record straight that Fairfield did not block access to any website or take any other action that would prevent members of the Fairfield community from purchasing tickets to an event at the Webster Bank Arena at Harbor Yard in Bridgeport.”
Dailey explained the possible issue stating, “We checked our systems and we are not blocking either site. The issue, more than likely, resides on the hosting service providers side,” meaning that this is a Ticketmaster issue, not a University one.
“Many times Ticketmaster will block IP addresses or ranges of IP addresses when they think someone is trying to purchase mass amounts of tickets at once,” Dailey said. This would explain the blocking of on-campus students who were simultaneously sending requests to Ticketmaster from the same IP Address.
When the blocking occurred, students encountered an error message on the screen in place of the website, explaining the trouble that Watanabe and friends experienced.
Donoghue concluded, “We would not censor the events our students want to attend on or off campus.”
The website is now up and running. Although many students have missed the pre-sale, there are still tickets available for the Foam Party.
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