Welcome back to Beaver Stadium, folks.

With a new season comes new thoughts and issues from the over 108,000 fans. Students especially seemed to have a lot of issues going through Gate A and once they got into the stadium. Here are some of our staff’s experiences after the first gameday back.

Alex Smith:

I didn’t even get into the game on Saturday. We left the tailgate around 2:45, and while I get that it is sort of late, I should at least get in around kickoff. We were told to move to a different line and that it would be quicker. Spoiler alert: it was not quicker. I couldn’t breathe in line, and other students kept pushing to get ahead of my group multiple times. Finally, we decided to leave and watch the game at home. I didn’t even realize the game started until we were by the BJC and saw there were seven minutes left in the first quarter. Do better.

Fernando Martinez Ruiz De Esparza:

It was good to be back at Beaver Stadium! I missed Penn State Football a lot, and I was so excited to be back in the student section, even though it was my last first game experience as a student.

However, I was not happy with my experience on Saturday. First off, my friends and I got to the stadium around 2:40 pm because we thought that it wasn’t going to take long to get in, like in my past three years. Turns out we had to wait almost an hour to get in and we were almost separated due to the number of fans that were waiting in line trying to get in. We barely made it for kickoff.

After we got our white wristbands and headed down to our section, we saw that there were no seats available and a lot of people were blocking the way down the stairs. The crazy part was that two areas in the student section were almost empty, and yet due to our wristband, we had no choice but to find somewhere in our section. We looked everywhere and just when we were about to walk out, my friend thankfully found good seats for us, even if we were all in uncomfortable positions. At the end of the first quarter, I went to get a drink and when I was going back to my seat, there were still a lot of people blocking the way down the stairs, so it was a mess to get back to my seat.

Major changes must be made. Students shouldn’t have to wait an hour to get into the stadium and the handling of wristbands has to be better. There is no reason for people to block stairs in some sections when there are a lot of empty seats in other areas of the student sections. I really hope that this doesn’t happen again.

Zoey Garrett:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. On a trip to the concession stand, I had discovered that my favorite item had made its glorious return — the buffalo chicken sandwich. Obviously, I had to acquire one to share with my friend, who is also an avid fan of buffalo chicken sandwiches, and this is when things took a turn for the worse. As I made my return, an unidentified navy t-shirt-wearing blonde boy ran into me, causing my poor buffalo chicken sandwich to act as a cushion between us. If you, the evil buffalo chicken sandwich smusher, are reading this, I hope you know that despite being complementary colors, buffalo sauce orange and gameday blue do not pair well from a fashion perspective.

Ashley Connington:

The line to get through the stadium at Gate A was so scary to see walking up. Although my friends and I left a bit later to get into the game, I’ve still been successful and in my seat from leaving at the same time in the past. But this was a mess. There was barely any order for lines and I was constantly pushed up against the barriers, waiting over an hour to get to my seat and making it just in time for kickoff, missing all of the pregame show. My friends in another line weren’t as lucky as I was, not making it in until 4 p.m. I still don’t understand why it took so long compared to the past, and it was even harder to find the entrance for our section with so many ways closed off and more confusion over wristbands. My friends and I were just able to squeeze into a row together, losing many of us along the chaos of Gate A, but there were sections completely empty across the way as the game started. Every year, the stadium has been making things worse for the student section, and I haven’t seen success.