Tickets to Mr. Georgetown — an annual pageant for male-identifying Georgetown University seniors to represent their club — went on sale on CampusGroups Sept. 12 amid massive demand, leading to major problems with the sales process. 

Students ran into an array of issues when purchasing tickets with CampusGroups — the only website approved for online ticket sales by the Center for Student Engagement, the university center that liaises with all university-sponsored organizations. Both the main webpage and payment portal crashed, multiple charges were processed for a single purchase and delays lasted upward of 30 minutes. Georgetown Program Board (GPB), the student organization that organizes Mr. Georgetown every year, plans to investigate the cause of the technological issues and respond to student concerns.

Kate Huckaby (SFS ’25), GPB events coordinator and an organizer for Mr. Georgetown, spoke to The Hoya on behalf of GPB and said they did not know the exact cause of the website crash and payment problems.

“We still do not have a definitive explanation for the root cause of the issue,” Huckaby wrote to The Hoya. “We believe ticket demand was just as high — if not higher — this year and this surge in site traffic may have caused CampusGroups to crash.”

Mr. Georgetown has historically been a sold-out event, with last year’s pageant selling all tickets in under 10 minutes. This year, roughly 40 minutes after the sale began, CampusGroups began processing students’ purchases, with tickets selling out shortly thereafter.

Students who experienced issues with CampusGroups during Mr. Georgetown’s ticket sales said pop-up windows indicated errors on both the registration page and the external payment portal.

CC Mesa (SFS ’26), who attended Mr. Georgetown in both 2022 and 2023, said the series of technological issues when purchasing a ticket caught her off guard.

“Last year and the year before, I had literally zero problems,” Mesa told The Hoya. “We started getting these messages on our devices saying, ‘The ticket you just tried to purchase was purchased by someone else. Please try again.’ I was really confused.”

Ruby Gilmore (SFS ’26), who attended Mr. Georgetown once before in September 2023, said she experienced similar technical issues when trying to purchase her ticket to this year’s event.

“The CampusGroups page kept buffering and when it finally did load, if I clicked on any buttons, I would get an error message,” Gilmore wrote to The Hoya. “I finally got the pay screen to load but every time I entered my information, I received an error message. I was charged five times despite this.”

Several students have expressed discontent with the ticket-purchasing experience and CampusGroups in general. Mesa said she felt using the CampusGroups app as opposed to the browser made the process even more difficult.

“I was using a mobile interface which, on CampusGroups, is confusing and hard to manage and hard to type things into and whatnot,” Mesa said. “At least twice, maybe three times, I was prompted to the page where you pay for the ticket — I put in my card information, submitted it and then it would reload and send me back to the homepage with the thing of ‘Someone got your ticket.’”

Mesa added that, while she doubts Mr. Georgetown organizers could have anticipated the chaos, she is concerned about how this will affect attendance at future popular campus events.

“I think maybe in the aftermath, they could’ve done something, but to anticipate it, I don’t think there’s anything they could’ve done,” Mesa said. “I’ve already heard apathy about Mr. Georgetown from people who were like, ‘I’m not messing with that.’”

Huckaby said individuals who were charged by CampusGroups multiple times should reach out to GPB for a refund.

“We have heard from three students that were charged multiple times by CampusGroups,” Huckaby wrote. “We encourage all students that were charged multiple times to contact [email protected] so that they can be issued refunds as well.”

Gilmore expressed reservations about future challenges in advertising and organizing events like Mr. Georgetown in the future but had fewer doubts about students’ determination to attend student-run events.

“Georgetown students are pretty diligent when they set their minds to things so I’m sure they’ll continue to try and buy tickets to popular events,” Gilmore wrote. “Whether or not they’re successful is another story.”

Huckaby added that GPB is working to find a solution to the problems with CampusGroups for future events.

“As an organization, GPB strives to provide accessible and inclusive programming for the entire undergraduate student body,” Huckaby wrote. “For our few ticketed events, we will work to find a ticketing solution that more closely aligns with our mission in the future. We sincerely apologize that Mr. Georgetown ticket sales did not go smoothly and that many students experienced difficulties.”