When Chris Hill, U athletics director, announced via e-mail that students must now get tickets for each game we erroneously assumed this meant there would be limited student seating.

We wrote an editorial and ran an online poll addressing what we felt were misplaced priorities.

Requiring students to reserve seats instead of limiting general admission to make room for more students seemed unjust.

It turns out the opposite is true.

Chris Hill is requiring students to reserve seats so he can guarantee each student who wants a seat will get one.

The student section can only fit 6,000 people. If more than that show up, there may not be room for them elsewhere if the stadium is sold out.

If students get tickets the Monday before a game, then the athletics department will have an idea of how many students are planning to attend and will reserve that many seats for them.

The old system had the potential of denying students admittance if the game was sold out. The new system will guarantee that every student will have a seat.

Instead of prioritizing paying fans as was supposed, the new system sacrifices good seats that can bring in a lot of money and gives them to students or their guests at discount prices.

Limiting the number of discount guest tickets allowed in the student section was an option Hill considered. But the current system was preferred so students can continue bringing their family and friends.

In every way possible the new system will look after the concerns and priorities of the students.

The stadium may lose a lot of money by turning more of the stadium seating over to students.

But money is not the number one priority-U students are.

The only catch is that tickets must be obtained early so the stadium knows how many to reserve.

But success comes at a cost and the inconvenience of going down to the ticket office is a pretty reasonable price to pay to watch 2004’s most exciting football program in our home stadium.

The Chronicle regrets misrepresenting the intentions of the athletics department and is grateful for the respect this policy shows toward student fans.