By Kevin Jacobson
Miami University’s tickets to see the Dalai Lama’s speech on Thursday sold out faster than anyone expected. This has prompted a number of the tickets - original price $5 for students - to be listed for sale on Craigslist.com.
Call it the 2,500 percent mark-up opportunity of a lifetime.
The highest price listed Tuesday on Craigslist was $250 for a pair of tickets. This posting came from a sophomore business major at Miami University.
In response to an e-mail inquiry about the tickets, the student responded, “$200 is the lowest I can go” for the pair, which originally cost the student all of $10.
Another post came from a junior environmental science major who was “looking for $100 per ticket."
Not everyone felt it necessary to take advantage of this opportunity profit from their tickets to a talk ironically titled “Ethics in the Modern World.” One respondent, who posted a wanted ad on Craigslist for tickets to the event, reported he only paid $20 per ticket. Another offered a ticket for $1, arguing, "Please, if you are going to ask for more (than $5), why not consider donating the excess to 'Free Tibet' ?"
Tickets to the Dalai Lama’s speech sold out shortly after they went on sale. The initial ticket offering Sept. 1 was to students, staff and faculty only, for $5 per ticket. A public ticket offering for $25 per ticket took place Sept. 29, and 411 tickets at $25 each were sold within 20 minutes, said Claire Wagner, associate director of university communications.
This prompted the university to offer a free live telecast of the speech at Hall Auditorium, as well as at each of the branch campuses.
Kevin Jacobson is a senior majoring in finance.
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