Featured image courtesy of: John Aloszka

When the UNF men’s basketball team took down JU last Thursday to clinch an ASUN Quarterfinal home game, UNF Student Body President John Aloszka was in the stands celebrating his twenty-second birthday with an Osprey victory. 

“UNF sometimes gets criticized for being too corporate but when I’m at a UNF basketball game, I feel pretty blue and grey,” Aloszka said. 

The Ospreys will host one ASUN Quarterfinal game on Tuesday, March 3 at 7:00 p.m. and for any conference playoff game, students are charged $5 to attend. Aloszka and UNF Director of Athletics Lee Moon worked together to find a way that students could come in free. 

“The ASUN sets prices for tickets so they make us charge students and we want students to go and pack the house,” Aloszka said. “If students have to pay, there’s a chance they might not go so it was a decision between Coach Moon and I that we’d work to make sure that every student that wanted to go could go for free.”

Aloszka is requesting $7,500 from Student Government so that all UNF students can get in free for the game. Since the game is less than two weeks away, Aloszka met with the Budget & Allocations Chair Markos Kampouroglou to set up an emergency budget meeting on Friday, Feb. 21 in order to have the request go to the UNF Senate to be approved.

In a UNF Senate meeting early this year, Aloszka addressed apathy and the lack of student activity with sports and on-campus events. With this request to buy out the student sections for the playoff game, Aloszka hopes that this will help break the barriers and increase student involvement for the future. 

“I’m a staunch believer in breaking down as many barriers as possible for getting students to do things at a university and that’s why we created the Student Involvement Center,” Aloszka said. “I talk about student apathy but I don’t blame students for the apathy. I think there’s a lot of things that have been done in Student Government and the University in the past that have led to where we are today and it’s improving.”

Aloszka was recently informed by Moon that UNF has the highest student turnout of all ASUN schools for men’s basketball games, including Liberty University. 

“It always helps when the team is good and we also have a really great class of seniors,” Aloszka said. 

Aloszka had two parting thoughts for students who are questioning coming to the ASUN Quarterfinal game,“It’s never a bad idea to go to class and it’s never a bad idea to go to a basketball game.” 

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