Tennessee Lottery: Campus sales of Tennessee Lottery tickets unlikelyWhile colleges are ready to accept tuition payments funded by Tennessee's lottery, that doesn't mean tickets for the games of chance will be sold on state campuses.
About 65,000 students are expected to attend state universities this fall on lottery-funded scholarships, and some students see a conflict in no on-campus ticket sales.
"If it's going to help students get an education, colleges should make an exception for the lottery," said Brendon Cole of Memphis, a freshman at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
"They should allow it (ticket sales) on campus," Cole told the Chattanooga Times Free Press.
UTC's student handbook cites gambling on university-owned property as a code-of-conduct violation.
Chattanooga State Technical Community College's campus has no retail outlets to sell tickets, said Foster Chason, an assistant to the president.
"I don't know if it would be proper for us to be in the business of promoting the lottery, from a philosophical standpoint," he said.
Chason said lottery tickets aren't being sold at any campuses governed by the Tennessee Board of Regents. He said administrators consider legalized gambling, while publicly sanctioned, to be inappropriate for the campus environment. Chason said that isn't a contradictory message.
"We could potentially be getting that student without the scholarship," he said.
The only retailers barred by law from selling Tennessee Lottery chances are pawn shops, cash-advance locations and businesses that exist for the sole purpose of ticket-marketing.
At Idaho State University, students receive free admission to basketball games if they present a scratched-off lottery ticket.
It's a "consolation prize for not winning money," said university spokeswoman Libby Howe. She said no school policy prdvents on-campus lottery ticket sales, but Idaho State University has no outlets that offer them.
It's the same in Georgia, said Tandi Reddick of the Georgia Lottery Corp.
"There is nothing prohibiting us from selling tickets on Georgia campuses," Reddick told the newspaper. "We just haven't done it."
Before Tennessee voters approved the lottery last year, rules at the University of Tennessee banned on-campus gambling.
"Lottery tickets aren't being sold on the campus, per se," said Mike Bradley, a spokesman for the University of Tennessee. "But the campus goes right up to Cumberland Avenue. That's known as 'the strip,' and there are merchants who sell tickets there. It looks like it's part of campus."
