Zero. That's the number of dates I guessed students who participated in the 'Speed Dating' affair wound wind up with. This event would seriously hurt these poor kids' self-image. They would find themselves desperate enough to wander down to the Iowa Memorial Union for what could possibly be their only shot at love this year, and they would wind up with nothing.
"The University of Iowa's Office of Student Life should be ashamed of themselves for sponsoring this affair," I thought.
And when I said 'kids,' that's exactly who was in attendance. These were home-sick freshmen who are not able to get into the downtown bars and meet people that way. The computer-geeks (whom I thought would make up the majority of the crowd) were definitely in attendance, but 1st year UI students clearly made up the greater population of these love-seekers.
When they first entered the building, students grouped in all-male, all-female clusters while pretending to be interested in the strawberries, cheese, and water the OSL supplied them with. Should the staff have offered them scotch, the students may have been a bit more at ease, but water did not do the trick. These poor kids avoided members of the opposite sex until they were cattle-prodded by staff-members to sit at tables across from each other, forcing them to make awkward small-talk.
When the chatting began students did their best to pretend to be interested in what majors, activities, and jobs their counterparts were currently involved in.
Each student was given roughly five minutes to try and impress the person sitting across from them, then a type of cowbell rang, and students moved on to the next lowly participant. And, I find this a bit sexist, at every table, during every section of chats, the males were made to get up and move to the next chair. The men continually got up and moved to the right, until they reached the person they originally started with. The tables were not small. Each guy went through 20 girls.
I decided my Online Journalism class was right. I needed to participate to get the full effect of this wonderous phenomenon know as speed dating. It was all right, until I got to number eight. I began growing tired of repeating what town, state, and high school I was from and, after a few minutes, decided to tell Emily (number eight) I was really just here to try and write a blog. Her eyes grew wide.
"Oh, that's cool, you're like undercover," she said.
I became irritated.
"Well, Emily, I'm not really undercover here," I said. "This isn't really investigative journalism; I'm not here trying to uncover what America's bank-owners have been doing with our tax dollars."
We had both had enough, and sat the rest of our 36 seconds in silence until the bell ushered me along to number nine.
At number nine I discovered the Office of Student Life was doing some undercover work itself. Katie (number nine) told me she worked for them, and her employer had forced several of them to come to the event to try and make things go 'smoothly.' Now, I didn't feel so bad.
At half-time, after number 10, a person dressed as a huge stork showed up at the event, and started handing out condoms to students who looked horrified upon receiving them. Jesus, I thought, the last thing these kids need is condoms. Try anti-depressants.
During half-time I went to the bathroom to escape this madness. I was exhausted. I ran into a young man in there who was having trouble trying to zip up his pants.
"What's wrong man?" I asked.
He looked at me lazily and informed me of his intentions.
"I really don't expect anything here," he said. "I brought a flask with bacardi here. I've had like ten drinks of it. I could never do anything like this sober."
I cursed myself for coming to this thing sober, and walked back out to finish my assignment. On the way back to the table, I noticed a table where kids could express interest in another potential date. Everyone there was issued numbers, as I have mentioned. If you found a 'number' you liked, you could give your number to people at this table, they would write it down, and give that number to the party you requested. The sheet had zero numbers on it.
Things went on as before. I didn't impress any youngsters, and they didn't move me. When I got to the last girl, (number 20), I realized that this assignment was going nowhere.
"Oh shit, what am I going to write about?" I thought.
Laila, (number 20), was the most impressive girl I had run into. She had kind of a gothic-look about her, which I found attractive, and didn't act like a deer caught in headlights when I looked at her. She was also a freshman, but I overlooked it for a bit. Our conversation went well; she was also unimpressed with the event, and said she just came to support her friend.
"Well shit," I thought, "Maybe I'll make friends with her and accomplish something here after all."
I felt like getting the hell out of there, and asked her if she wanted to go smoke.
We went outside, and while we were smoking, I found out we had the same taste in music, and talked about that for awhile. I was considering giving her my number.
Then everything collapsed.
She made the mistake of telling me she bought a laptop from a guy at Best Buy because she thought he was hot.
Her freshman intellect had finally shown. She had spent a couple thousand because a slick computer-guy had charmed her. So, the date was off, but I learned something. Computer guys can be cool, and maybe even attractive.
I knew my assignment was doomed, but I watched the youngsters file out of the IMU hopeful that some lucky couple had made a connection. As I watched them all leave I counted the number of people who came out with a date on their arm. Guess how many had one?
Zero.