Campus was ablaze with neon yellows, pinks and blues last weekend as SLU students banded together to celebrate the Outing Club’s (OC) Tenth Annual Titus Mountain Get Down. A Friday night Rail Jam on the quad kicked off the festivities, which continued through Saturday as over 1,000 SLU students were bussed to and from Titus Mountain for the ski party event of the year.
It was, essentially “a stoke-filled, powder-shredding, glidegetting, neon-clad wicked weekend ski event,” as described by the OC. This year, however, some SLU students attempted to partake in the festivities in a less than honest manner.
When the Outing Club announced mid-way through their second day of ticket sales that Titus tickets had run out, students began to search desperately for alternatives. Class Facebook pages filled with offers to buy tickets second-hand, and students seeking a ticket watched the value climb from its original price of $30 to over $100. In the midst of the ticket shortage, some students turned to another alternative—fake tickets. At 11 a.m. on Saturday, snow-suit-clad SLU students formed a rowdy line beside a herd of yellow school busses, skis and tickets in hand.
OC house members Samuel Monzillo ’19 and Stoddard Rowley ’19 joined with Director of Student Activities & Leadership, John Roberts O’Connor, to scan and authenticate tickets.
Yet, as the morning kicked off, the crew began to realize that nearly every student about to board the first bus carried a fraudulent ticket. “25 total fake Titus tickets were confiscated,” O’Connor states. “We had 19 in one form of duplicate of the same ticket number, and six other attempts of fake tickets with varying formats and ticket numbers.”
Tickets presented included legitimate tickets from past years, photocopies of current tickets and even stickers printed with the image of current tickets that had been stuck onto the fronts and backs of miscellaneous ski tickets.
Ruben Castren ’19, OC’s student president, explains why fake tickets are problematic. “I don’t know if people quite realize how big of a deal it is to make a fake ski pass,” he stated. “It’s a pretty serious crime… It’s like someone trying to duplicate a day pass to Whiteface, or any other mountain.” Titus tickets are not just something the OC produces to regulate attendance—they are legitimate tickets to the ski mountain. “Titus mountain gives us 1,000 tickets,” Castren explains, “and we owe them $30 for each ticket sold.” The tickets grant access to SLU busses, yes—but they also allow students to ride the lifts at Titus, a legitimate ski mountain.
Producing fake tickets is not just a crime—it also directly affects other SLU students. “I was on the last bus,” states Castren, “and it was completely full.” Since fake ticket holders stood towards the front of the line, if the tickets had not been identified as fraudulent, students who paid for legitimate tickets would have been turned away. Ticket-checkers Rowley and Monzillo explained just how upsetting it was to encounter fake tickets. “It was especially disappointing when we realized that most of the fake tickets had been duplicated and sold by one or two people,” explains Monzillo. “I can only imagine how frustrating it must have been for those who unknowingly bought a fake ticket for a large sum of money and were then turned away at the door.”
Rowley adds, “it’s just a bummer that some kids wanted to exploit their fellow classmates.”
In the midst of all this ticket fuss, some may wonder why the 1,000 ticket limit even exists. Castren answers this question. “Titus mountain is okay with selling more,” he admits, “but we can’t afford any more than 25 busses.” In fact, he admits, bus prices went up this year, cutting into the already significant hit Titus takes out of the OC budget. “If the school wanted to pay more for busses,” he adds, “then this would be a different conversation.”
As it stands, Titus remains capped at 1,000. Whether or not next year’s limit may be different remains to be seen, but either way, the Outing Club reminds people to be honest when Titus season rolls around. “Titus is a magical time that allows you to mingle with a majority of the school,” emphasizes Rowley. Titus is, overall, a time to celebrate our little SLU community—not break it down.