About 15 students - male and female - will be up for sale Friday at the first Spring Date Auction, which is sponsored by the National Panhellenic Council.
For a $1 donation, students can bid on the man or woman of their choice from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. at N-100 Business College Complex, as well as dance to beats spun by DJ Logic.
Money raised at the event will benefit an April step show sponsored by the council, which oversees the nine historically black fraternities and sororities at MSU.
“It’s going to be nice,” said Porscha Edwards, a marketing senior and the vice president of National Panhellenic Council. “It’s going to be a date auction like no other.”
Edwards said they are expecting “to pack the house,” hopefully bringing in at least 300 people.
Though he already has a girlfriend, Maurice Turner still volunteered to be put on the auction block.
He said he’s doing it because “it’s something I’ve never done” and that his girlfriend doesn’t mind him going on a date with another woman.
“She’s really excited about it,” the human resources in society senior said. “Basically ’cause it’s going to a good cause.”
He may need her comfort Friday night, though, when he says he’ll probably be nervous.
“Nobody wants to get there and have it silent,” Turner said. “You do have those types of concerns. You hope your friends won’t let that happen to you.”
But he said he’s not expecting to rake in too much dough, anyway.
“I just hope for something respectful - 20, 30 dollars would be cool,” he said. “I’m not expecting anything outlandish; as long as I reach double figures, it’s fine.”
Turner, a member of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity Inc., said he has plenty to offer interested women.
“I’m a 6-foot-4 senior - intelligent, I love poetry (and) I’m a good listener,” he said. “That’s not something you can just walk up on campus and find. You might have to take your chance and buy that.”
But he doesn’t want to take just anyone. He has ideas of the woman he wants to go on the date with.
He’s hoping for “everybody’s dream - the nice, pretty woman with the long hair that’s funny, somebody you can talk to, get along with.
“I have a lot of female friends, so I wouldn’t be surprised if one of those people bought me. That would be cool.”
Marketing junior LaTorsha Hill is single and plans on going to the date auction, but she said she’s not looking to pick up a date Friday.
“At this point in time, I’m not (going to bid), because of my lavish spending habits,” the marketing junior said. “I’m gonna do everything in my power, but I can’t say, ‘Definitely not.’”
