Neihardt date auction, talent show expected to be well-received once again

A week away from Valentine's Day, flowers are selling out, heart-shaped chocolates and stuffed animals are disappearing from store shelves and students are being auctioned off to go on dates.

Neihardt Residence Hall is holding its annual date auction on Thursday evening to benefit the Make-A-Wish Foundation. The auction, as it has in past years, takes the form of a four-hour talent show with five-minute segments for groups and individuals to showcase their varied abilities. After each performance, the audience bids on the entertainer.

"It's not human slavery — that's not what we're going for," joked Taylor Dailey, a junior family consumer sciences and education major at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, noting that charity and fun are the ultimate concerns. "We're not actually auctioning off people here."

Dailey participated in the date auction last year and is well-versed on how Thursday night's talent show will look. Local businesses donate prizes, such as gift cards or vouchers to restaurants, which are bid on after each talent act is finished, even though the bids tend to coincide with the act that's just been performed — with the donations usually coming from friends and floor members. Last year for Dailey's talent, she performed a sock puppet skit with a group of girls on her floor who she was newly acquainted with.

"We decided to call a floor meeting to talk about the date auction and what we were going to do," Dailey said. "We ended up doing a sock puppet skit out of the movie ‘Mulan' to the song ‘I'll Make a Man Out of You.'"

After the group performed their skit, they were purchased for $220, but didn't go on a date with the purchaser. This is generally the case, though that same female floor bid on their male floor counterparts to great effect.

"We went out on a date breakfast with them," Dailey said. "I am actually now dating a guy from that group. It was perfect timing to say the least."

This year Dailey is a resident assistant in Neihardt and called a floor meeting earlier in the year to spark interest in the auction, as well as plan out a talent.

"She showed us videos of last year's performances," said Samantha Burtwistle, a freshman English and physics major, who is participating in the auction this year. "We're doing a dance to ‘It's Raining Men' and ‘Single Ladies.' We have part of the choreography done, but we're going to practice tomorrow to learn the rest."

Dailey emphasized, however, that there is usually myriad of talents on display at the auction, far more than just singing and dancing.

"I've been to talent shows before and I was impressed with the quality of the acts at this one," Dailey said. "At the end (of the date auction last year), there was a full jazz band that performed and some members even dressed up like the Blues Brothers. It's better than the average talent show."

brandonperchal

@Daileynebraskan.com

if you go:

when: Thursday, 8 p.m.

where: Neihardt Residence Hall

how much: free