CAT hosts “Speed Dating” for a pre-Valentine’s match-making event
By Eleanor Christopher
C.A.T. hosted its Speed Dating event for the first time in several years on Feb. 7 and according to several students, it was a hit. A few people were concerned that there would be more girls than guys there but it turned out to actually be pretty even. More than 50 students registered and about 40 showed up for the two hour event.
The dating process consisted of the girls each sitting down at a table while every three minutes, the boys would rotate to their next date until every boy had gone on a mini date with every girl.
The dress attire of the event was supposed to be casual steakhouse attire. However because of their improper attire, two boys came dressed as Mario and Luigi and were kicked out and unable to participate, which gave a couple of the people there a good laugh and definitely lightened the mood for those who were a little nervous beforehand.
During the night, C.A.T. gave out prizes such as gift certificates to Olive Garden, Red Lobster, P.F. Chang’s, and Longhorn Steakhouse, as well as Free Movie Passes and WOW Courtside Basketball seats. It was said that these prizes would make perfect “date nights” for the participants.
“It was a truly adorable, really cool event,” said another one of the daters. “There were question cards that prompted you in case you had an awkward silence and the date night prizes just really made it even better!”
According to another dater, “People who made eye contact seemed more confident and held better conversations overall. And of course, it’s all about the non-verbals.”
In the end, forty of the participants were matched and 25 percent of those were perfect matches, meaning both the guy and girl gave each other a perfect score.
“I was only matched with one person but I wasn’t really interested in them,” said one anonymous dater. “But it was a really interesting and fun experience and I am really glad I participated.”
Another anonymous dater said, “I met the love of my life!” She was completely overjoyed.
“Overall I was very pleased with the turnout and the interactions between students,” said Maghon Walker, Coordinator of Student Programming. “Next time, I would like to get a bit more information about each participant when they pre-register, such as class year, so that we can have a better representation of the student body. I would also like to be able to accommodate for people who cancel last minute or arrive without registering because it was hard to deal with changes due to the pre-printed out nametags and score-cards.”
Matches were definitely made with the help of speed dating. There are records of a few couples actually going on dates with each other after meeting at the speed dating event. The people who attended can confidently say that this event helped them get to know more people and made them more confident with putting themselves out there in the future.
Speed Dating was surely a success and it definitely put students in the mood for Valentine’s Day. Maybe at least one person was able to find a “valentine” because of it, but really what matters are that students were able to meet new, interesting people in a casual, fun environment