We would like to congratulate the Popular Entertainment Committee (PEC) for its exceedingly professional handling of the ticket sales for the Joni Mitchell concert scheduled for March 7 in Johnson Gym.

In reality, the whole situation has been an apparent series of bungles and misunderstandings that will probably exclude many UNM students from good seats at a concert that is being sponsored by a student committee.

First of all, when the ticket sales were announced, it was said that all tickets will be sold by mail-order, a practice we consider not to be in the interests of the students.

Now we are told that there will be tickets on sale for students at the regular discount price starting Wednesday and those will be in the first 15 rows on the floor of Johnson Gym.

Those students who have already sent in their money for tickets will be given a dollar refund, but that won't change the fact that if they had known tickets for students would go on sale later, they might have gotten a better seat and saved the price of a postage stamp in the process.

The idea of reserving seats for students to purchase after mail order tickets have already gone on sale is a good idea, if you have to take the chance on mail-order. But there is no reason why that practice should be employed by the PEC for a university concert. If there is, we'd like to know the reasons, and they should be good ones.

And if the ticket mess isn't enough, those of you who do get tickets to see Joni Mitchell will find another problem at hand - parking. It seems that on the same night the Albuquerque Civic Light Opera has been scheduled to perform in Popejoy Hall. But there may still be enough time for someone to work out some kind of arrangement concerning the foul-up. We can only hope.

The PEC has done an excellent job of bringing in concerts of a wide variety and appeal to the university in the past year. But when you are dealing with people, especially students, who have to give up $5 or $6 of their money for a mediocre or bad seat only because of administrative misunderstandings, you should expect them to be angry.

Again, our congratulation for a job (so far) well done.