The S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications’ decision to automatically enter all Newhouse students in a lottery for Oprah Winfrey tickets was poorly planned and communicated. Newhouse should have offered its students the option to be entered, in order to prioritize students that actually wanted to attend the event.

Winfrey will speak in Goldstein Auditorium on Sept. 29 as part of a day-long series of events to dedicate the Newhouse Studio and Innovation Center. Of the 500 tickets available for the Goldstein balcony, 200 were offered to Syracuse University students and the other 200–300 tickets were reserved for a lottery for Newhouse students.

Because Winfrey is here for a Newhouse event, it made sense for the school to reserve some tickets specifically for its students.  However, the way in which the lottery was planned and publicized potentially took tickets away from students — both enrolled and not enrolled in Newhouse — who truly wanted to see Winfrey speak.

Newhouse could have improved its lottery in two ways: notifying its students about the lottery option before tickets were handed out in Schine Student Center and by giving its students the option to be entered into the lottery instead of automatic entry.

If Newhouse students had known about the lottery, some may have made the choice not to stand in line for a ticket. This could have allowed more non-Newhouse students to get tickets. And if Newhouse had asked students to opt in for the lottery, it would have cut down on the number of people entered in the Newhouse lottery.

Newhouse students have 48 hours from when they’re selected to pick up their tickets. Because Newhouse automatically entered its entire student body, this could lead to a high number of unclaimed tickets than if they had required students interested in seeing Winfrey to opt into a lottery. Though the unclaimed tickets will re-enter the lottery, the 48-hour window could also make the process of handing out tickets more complicated and inconvenient.

The system Newhouse devised was inefficient, and it was a poor choice to notify students about the lottery after the initial tickets were handed out.