UMass and Amherst students volunteered their time for a good cause last Friday.
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After
last week's Date Auction, the Smith chapter of Massachusetts Public
Interest Group (MassPIRG) is approximately $400 closer to sending a
group of 20 students to the PowerShift conference in Maryland later
this month. Unfortunately, their total earnings from the event make up
less than a quarter of the $2,000 needed to fund the trip. Nonetheless,
MacKenzie Clark '11, who chaired the event, remains hopeful.
"Smith
has a lot of funding available ... Hopefully, that funding - in
combination with [what] we earned [Friday] night - will cover everyone
for the conference," Clark said.
According to Clark, the concept
of a Valentine's Day date auction started out as a joke. However, the
group decided to give the idea a try. "It's hard to get Smithies to
come to anything, and it can be so frustrating to try to put on events
or fundraisers and have no one show up, so we decided to put on
something that we thought would be more successful," she said.
Clark
estimated that between 200 and 300 guests crowded into Davis Ballroom,
more than twice the size of their target attendance. MassPIRG "sold" 15
dates with bids starting at $10 and going as high as $40.
"I
think that the reason a date auction is a successful fundraiser at
Smith is because there just aren't any guys here," said Clark. Of the
15 dates sold by MassPIRG, only one was female.
While some
criticized the group's decision to use a majority of male volunteers,
Clark was adamant that the decision was purely pragmatic. "We debated
auctioning off boys and girls, but the consensus we came to was that
... we didn't think people would bid as much for girls as for guys,"
she said.
Clark continued, "I hope that people weren't
offended by us auctioning off mostly boys. We weren't trying to be
heteronormative; we just thought that it would be a more effective
fundraiser."
Amy Parker, the MassPIRG campus organizer for Smith
and Amherst College, agreed that MassPIRG's intent was not exclusivity.
According to Parker, the group spoke to other student organizations
that had done date auctions in the past and found that auctioning male
volunteers "seemed like the way to raise the most funds."
In general, the event's attendees, organizers and participants left with a positive impression.
However,
Julia Nims '09, the only woman auctioned off, felt that the event could
have been more successful if MassPIRG had "publicized that we were
[auctioning] both sexes."
Saumitra Thakur, a sophomore at
Amherst College who was sold for $28 at the auction, stated that while
he "could understand how this could be construed ... to be demeaning,"
the "light-hearted spirit" of the event kept MassPIRG's good intentions
at the forefront.
University of Massachusetts-Amherst junior
Matthew Drake - sold for $30 - agreed. "At first I thought it was going
to be embarrassing, but it was kind of fun."
All of the date
auction's proceeds went towards the MassPIRG trip to PowerShift '09, a
national conference organized by the Energy Action Coalition. According
to the PowerShift Web site, "10,000 young leaders from around the world
will kick off a historic year by traveling to Washington, D.C., to
demand that the President and Congress rebuild our economy and secure
our future by passing bold, just climate and energy policies that
prioritize green jobs and renewable energy."
"My goal for
PowerShift is for everyone to be able to go for free," Clark said. "It
is really a great opportunity, so we don't want money to stop anyone
from being able to go."
