Student Life hosted a three-minute speed dating marathon event in the Meyer ballroom to help students meet new people, days before Valentine’s Day.
A half-hour before the event, nervous and excited students slowly filled the empty space in front of the ballroom doors, signed up and received numbers.
Many don’t have anything else better to do on a Thursday night during an ongoing pandemic.
For marketing student Alyssa Winter, speed dating sounded like an interesting activity to take part in
“I’ve always wanted to do it and it seems like the easiest way to meet new people during COVID,” Winter said.
Dressed in Cowboy Boots and old-timey dapper clothing, Welding major Constantine Daniels shares his brief story.
“I’m technophobic and was raised in an Amish-adjacent community. So this is a very good opportunity for me to meet new people,” Daniels said.
For many since the beginning of the pandemic, casually meeting new people at parties or get-togethers are a thing of the past.
Shanae Mundee, Director of Student Life, and Avery Cantrell, Assistant Director of Student Life lead the students into the ballroom.
Inside the ballroom, there were many lines of chairs parallel to each other, about six feet apart. Women on one side and men on the other. Many of the chairs were filled as Mundee briefed the students on how the speed dating was going to work.
“Looks like there are more men than women, so the women will stay put and the men will swap chairs,” said Mundee at the beginning of the event.
After three minutes went by and the siren on the megaphone wailed, and the men were instructed to move down to the next seat.
As everyone was getting more comfortable and more talkative, the small ballroom slowly became warmer with each minute passing by.
While some of the students interviewed seem nervous at first, the room looked more relaxed with every round, it appeared that everyone was having a good time.
Cantrell discussed some of the logistics and how the overall event was operating.
“So, I believe we had a total of six people that had different sexual orientations, and those are self-identified. When they signed up, we brought them over to another room to kind of let them mingle. We didn’t quite get the turnout that we would want. We tried to be as inclusive as we could of everybody,” Cantrell said.
According to Cantrell, this is the first time they’ve done an event like this.
“It’s really cool to see students coming out and being excited for an event like this, especially during a time like this,” Cantrell said.
The Student Life organization plans to have a couples trivia event the night after and dinner with a movie night to close out Valentine’s day celebrations.
