"It's gonna be sexy in the house!" Simon Mangold yelled into the microphone of the Hess Recreation Center as he kicked off Wednesday's Date Auction.
The auction, hosted by Bartlett Hall, was a big hit among students as they put their money down for a hot date.
The 30 dates each strutted their stuff down the catwalk as emcees Mangold and Alfred Mendoza, both Skarland resident assistants, kept the tone lively and entertaining as they read the answers to the surveys that each date filled out before the auction.
"If there was one thing she wouldn't want her parents to know, it would be that she's kissed boys -- and liked it," Mangold read while auctioning off sophomore basketball player Lexie Black.
He added to Mark Sams' answers a bit: "If his life were a movie, it would be 'American Pie 1' -- and you know what happens in that movie."
Sams, a senior civil engineering major, worked the crowd in a fur hat and pulled some sweet dance moves like "the sprinkler."
Sams suggests that in order to sell themselves to the crowd, future dates should "do the shopping cart" (referring to the dance move). Other dates found other ways to entertain as well.
Jon Nichols, a sophomore justice major, gave bidders lap dances in order to up their bids.
"You have to tease the audience a bit," he said, "They're not going to pay an extra dollar for something they know they can get for free."
The crowd was rowdy and in some cases, willing to shell out the cash. The night's top date, Kelly Becker, a freshman on the swim team, brought in $62, while some others topped out at $2.
"I don't want to be rejected," said Lindsay St. Peter, a sophomore. She then admitted to having a backup bidder, just in case. Her backup apparently wasn't needed; she was auctioned off with a friend for an impressive $48.
The bids for women definitely overshadowed the amount people were willing to put up for a man. The third place bid for a woman was $28, while the guys' top representative, Nichols, didn't break the $20 mark. He went for $19.
Nichols thought that the crowd's "pockets were kind of shallow," but that they were better than the crowd the auction pulled last semester.
Excepting a few high bids, Sams said that most of the bidding seemed to be from friends of those being auctioned off. A friend bought him for $15, a tie for the second-highest bid on a guy.
"I didn't think the crowd bid enough," Sams said.
While many people did come to snag a date, most of the audience members showed up to support a friend or just to be entertained. When asked why he came, Justin Priest, a senior fisheries major, answered, "'cause it's funny."
Shane Tachick, a junior biology major, had similar reasoning.
"I needed a good laugh and wanted to waste some time," he said.
Aren Ray, a senior computer science major, pulled a wad of $1 bills out of his pockets and said that he came "because I got the dough," just before saying that he wasn't going to bid on anyone.
The auction, which was a fundraiser for Bartlett Hall, brought in over $300, with more money expected to be coming in from people who didn't pay cash at the time of the auction.
According to Blaine DeWalt, the assistant resident director of Bartlett Hall, the staff is still deciding what the participants will receive as their date, or if they will have to arrange the date on their own.
Participants' reasons for being auctioned off varied.
"I tend to use the date auction because it's a little less illegal than prostitution, and I still get the same benefits," Nichols jokingly said.
"I thought it would be fun," Sams said, "I was lookin' for love."
