Richard Howenstein, senior, Indianapolis; Jordan Bunch, senior, Columbus; Chris Mulligan, senior, Chicago; Kyle Swiss, senior, Long Island, N.Y.; Ryan Huffman, graduate student, Carmel; Allison Fulton, freshman, Mooresville; Tim Madden, senior, Chicago; Conor Sullivan, senior, Orland Park, Ill.; Augie Sundermeier, senior, Oak Lawn, Ill.; Andy Best, senior, Winnetka, Ill.; Ward Weber, freshman, Dallas, Texas; Ben Kunkel, sophomore, Jasper; Matt Abelman, junior, Sharon, Mass.; Pete Masengale, senior, Indianapolis.

These are the 14 people I met at we’ve now taken to calling Camp Crean on Tuesday night. If I missed someone, I apologize. I imagine others will join them at some point.

It was somewhere between 34 and 36 degrees outside, with little wind but leftover dampness from the weekend rain.

They came to camp out for Saturday’s game against Kentucky — they all have general admission tickets and they want the best seats possible. IU police told them they had to take down their tents, so they’re sleeping there without them.

If there has been anyone so publicly critical of IU students when it comes to their involvement in athletics department issues as me, I have not met them.

In September 2008, Drew Allenspach — an IU golfer and the student representative on the search committee that eventually selected current AD Fred Glass — held a public forum in the Frangipani Room at the Memorial Union.

The purpose of that forum was to let students come voice their opinions, thoughts or concerns about what they would like to hear from candidates for the AD position. Twelve people showed up, including Allenspach and executive members of IUSA, who had helped organize the event.

So they held another one a week later, and pushed for us to write a preview story in the IDS, which we did. At the second meeting, eight people came. Every one of them was there because they were either media members covering the forum, or because they had some part to play in it.

Soon after Glass began work in 2009, he opened the doors to another room in the Union for the purpose of making himself more accessible to students’ thoughts and opinions. Unless my memory fails me, the only three people to turn up at that meeting were myself and the presidents of IUSA and the Residence Halls Association.

I’ve arrived to those two memories recently, as students complain about the general admission policy IU Athletics put into place last year, and as the student section has been left about half empty for nearly every one of Indiana’s home games.

My point is this: You can’t effect change without showing up. When your most lasting impression is of empty seats at basketball games, then you simply cannot expect to be listened to when it’s convenient for you.

I spoke with Glass briefly Tuesday night. He was in New York and his phone battery died during our conversation, so we didn’t touch on everything related to this evening and this issue. But he did tell me that Athletics, when it switched to the GA plan (something he supported), expected some emptiness in the student section.

“It was artificially masked when it was a reserved section,” Glass said, referring to the problem of empty seats against lesser opponents. “And I think the gap issue, if history is any prologue, will become less of an issue as we get into the beefy part of the schedule.”

Fair enough. But there are still complaints about the general admission seating not always being full, primarily that there’s no way for students who don’t want their tickets to effectively sell them to other students, and because IU Athletics doesn’t let students not in the GA section fill in those gaps at any point during the game.

Glass said the first problem is in some ways unavoidable, because Athletics needs the revenue student tickets provide, and if such a “secondary market” were made available, the department fears too many people would shirk season tickets in favor of picking which games they wanted to attend and buying specifically for those games.

To the second issue, Glass actually did say that department officials have been discussing some way to fill those empty seats at some point during the game, though any such change in the GA policy remains in its infancy.

So in a nutshell, that’s the answer he gave on those two particular proposals. His phone died before I could ask him about Camp Crean, and the decision by the police department to disallow tents, which IUPD was consistent with a university policy against them.

I’ve been told numerous times that I’m against students, that I’m not on their side when it comes to the problems surrounding attendance and ticketing. All I’ve said in response is simply that I don’t believe enough students have been willing to do the leg work to legitimize their concerns in the eyes of the people whose attention they need.

Fred Glass, in my experience, has been quite accessible for a person in his position, so go access him.

Put another way: It’s much harder to ignore people on your lawn than it is empty seats in your arena. Whether the young men and women down at Camp Crean meant to or not, they are making a difference. General admission seating is a good idea on its face, but it has flaws that need to be examined and worked out, and they are bringing attention to it in a polite, firm, respectful way.

I have no problem with your having a problem with the current system. But you can’t stage a sit-in on Twitter. You have to get your hands dirty, or cold, in this particular case.

In the meantime, let the kids put up their damn tents, provided they can camp out safely. It’s cold, and they care, and given where the basketball program is right now, they are an excellent image to attach to IU basketball.

And bring them some hot chocolate too. It’s freezing outside.