And the bidding starts at $10. The bids continued on, rising up, thanks to the generosity of many students who wanted to contribute to the fundraiser put on by Alianza Latina. Each year Alianza Latina hosts a date auction as part of Latino heritage month, to raise money for a local charity. This year the charity was the Young Women’s Christian Assoiciation. The YWCA is trying to raise money for new computers, which children can use to learn to enhance their computer skills and to keep up with the technology of a changing tomorrow. The YWCA is a notable charity organization, which needs as much support as it can get. Almost $3,000 was raised over the course of the evening, which is an outstanding amount. This was the third year of the date auction and the generosity of the audience was amazing.
The date auction started a little after 8 pm and lasted till about 10:30 pm. There were many people who auctioned themselves as individuals or as groups. Jessica Benton, vice president of the Alianza Latina said “Thank you to all of the participants for coming out and being here to be able to make a change for charity.” The volunteers that helped out at this event made the evening very exciting. The masters of ceremonies Antonio Borges, Leslie Granger, Shadeequa Miller, and Brandace King drew out the enthusiasm of every one in the room. The bids kept going up and the enthusiasm kept rising along with them. The excitement never died throughout the evening. Some of the audience got involved and started to volunteer themselves to be auctioned off. The highest bid went out to two volunteers from the audience. These gorgeous gentlemen, Chris Hernandez and Raul “Bayo” Cal, raised $250. There were many other high bids that were very comparable and generous to the YWCA and Alianza Latina.
Some of the people who put themselves up for the auction tried to raise more money by showing their talents, such as playing a guitar, dancing, or lip-syncing to the audience. One gentleman brought roses to entice girls to bid on him and show his sweet personality. There were several bidding wars that happened in the evening over various individuals or groups. The most exciting one was for two senior students, Thaiese Trader and Farah Martin, in which two groups of guys, one from the class of ’04 and one from ’06, competed for dates with these two beautiful girls. A few students were asked what they thought of the event. From the words of Devin Harris, “It was a fun annual event. I’m excited about next year. And some pretty ladies bought me and called me big poppa! Thank you Alianza Latina.” Devin Harris apparently enjoyed the evening, as did many others. Lisa Rochester said, “There was a lot of love in the room”, which is a good statement of how the atmosphere in the room felt. Many friends came out to support each other and the charity.
Overall, everyone enjoyed the evening, which according to Flavio Barbossa, can be summed up “a diverse show, which was great, and I liked how the community came out to support us all.”
