Students donated both their bodies and their money to charity last Thursday at the Second Annual Charity Date Auction outside the Kappa Sigma fraternity house on Locust Walk. The event was organized by Kappa Sig and the Delta Delta Delta and Chi Omega sororities. Thirty-nine men and women volunteered to be auctioned off for a date. Each participant walked down the "catwalk" and stood in front of the crowd, while emcees and Kappa Sigma brothers Paulo Eapen, a College junior, and Evan Karabell, a Wharton sophomore, read a humorous blurb about the auctionee. Along with a date, successful bidders received prizes, making it difficult to discern exactly what some of the attendees were bidding on. College freshman Lauren Weinberger, whose $150 bid won her a date with Wharton sophomore Ashlea Higgs and a $500 Nicole Miller jacket, said she "went for the complete package." The highlight of the event came as a BMW rolled up in front of the fraternity and bidding opened for a date with Samantha Cross and a weekend in Cape May, N.J., with the use of the car, donated by Dan Rosen BMW. The bidding started at $100 and went up to a record $400. As College freshman Andrew Margolies raised his paddle for the final bid, Eapen announced, "now there's a man with a fat wallet and a big heart." "I am very excited I won," said Margolies, a Daily Pennsylvanian photographer. "It was a lot of money but it was all spent on charity and a hot date." The auction was created last year by Eapen and Eric Metzroth, a 1998 Wharton graduate, with the intent "to have an event before Fling that brings the whole campus together," Eapen said. Both Greeks and non-Greeks were represented, and this year's organizers Eapen and Wharton sophomore Russell Kling "tried to choose people from different organizations," while other participants simply volunteered to be auctioned off. Both the bidders and the auctionees seemed to enjoy themselves. Education School doctoral candidate David Hallowell won a date with Engineering sophomore Kurt Klinger, chairperson of the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Alliance, for $140 after an intense bidding war. "It was terribly exciting and I was not going to let that little bit of a thing outbid me," Hallowell said. Some auctionees simply threw caution to the wind. "It was awesome," said College senior Austin Root, who stripped down to his boxer briefs as the bidding started. "It was definitely eccentric because I've never done anything like this." Root was not the only one to try to entice the crowd into bidding higher. College junior Erica Brand dressed up as a Catholic schoolgirl, and College juniors Hannah Cannom and Paige Kollock went as a pair, one dressed as an angel and the other as a devil. A total of about $3,500 was collected to benefit both the American Red Cross and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. The money given to the Red Cross will be used as medical aid for refugees in Kosovo.
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