Where Will the Children Play?!?

Not that I'm shopping for more season tickets for myself, but out of curiosity I checked the Rutgers ticket office today to see which sections have seats being offered for new season-ticket holders in the expanding Stadium. As you can see by the sections highlighted in red below, none are being offered from the new South Endzone sections 131-144, but they are being offered in the former student sections in the northwest corner (sections 110-115) and in some of the upper deck sideline sections.

Which brought up the question in my mind of where the students were going to be sitting and how it was going to affect the crowd dynamics in R House this fall. I found the confirmation of my fears here in the 2009-2010 RUTGERS FOOTBALL STUDENT TICKET POLICY that the students will be entering through the new South Endzone entrance and sitting far from me in sections 134-141. From my seats in section 123 I've often felt like we were the main recipients of the students' enthusiatic "R"s to which we replied with our feeble "U"s. We also were in the thick of the "Upstream Red Team" cheers after scores and "First Down Touchdown Go R U" cheers after first downs. Does losing the students mean that we also lost our proximity to the band and the cheerleaders?? If so, I hope that the new occupants of the northwest corner do their homework and learn all the cheers before September 7th. And while they're at it, they need to learn all the verses of "On the Banks of the Old Raritan" too.

Having the students filling one entire end of the Stadium could change the dynamics for the better, leading to calls and responses that involve the entire Stadium (including those people in the lower level between the twenty-yard lines who seem to think they should be able to sit during a Rutgers football game), but we'll see soon.