Back in the day, the student section was also open to General Admission so it's hard to compare student attendance now to student attendance then. I do know this: There were empty rows and even some UND fans up in the student section at Dacotah at those games once they moved to November. Ah, but, yeah, I don't think that there were empty seats in the FargoDome student section for UND so that is a good comparison - although I'm pretty sure that they just showed up for the game rather than having to claim their tickets.
But according to Lakes all NDSU has to do is start losing and the students will flock to those seats. Interesting idea.