While some students brought backpacks to school last Thursday evening, others brought sleeping bags, pillows and tents in order to ensure their spot in line at the ticket giveaway for the Bill Clinton and Paul Orfalea discussion.

As only 600 free tickets were available to UCSB students, some enthusiasts began lining up at 6 p.m. Thursday night outside the Associated Students Ticket Office, where they waited until 8:30 the next morning for tickets to be available.
Titled “Leadership for the Global Future,” the discussion is the inaugural event for the UCSB Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, which opened last school year. The center is funded by Kinko’s founder Paul Orfalea and the Orfalea Family Foundation. The event will be held Oct. 13 from 1:15 to 2:15 p.m. at the Arlington Theater in downtown Santa Barbara.

By the time the free student tickets ran out, about 1,000 people had joined the queue, which stretched past the Arts building. In addition, the tickets that were available for purchase at the Arlington Theater sold out Thursday, which was the same day they went on sale.

While some of the students waiting for tickets huddled together in line on the concrete, sleeping until sunrise, others watched West Wing DVDs on their laptops or conversed about topics not related to politics. When the remaining 400 students were informed the ticket stock had been depleted, one angrily threw a chair to the side. However, the last person to receive a ticket walked away shouting “Holy shit jackpot.”

– Daily Nexus staff report