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SOLD!

Tahir Hasanov '25

Jan 24, 2025

On Friday, January 10, a group of seniors hosted a charity auction in the Simon Student Center to support the local cold weather shelter. 

“It was for our Entrepreneurship class—Mr. McGuire's B Block class,” said Winston Watkins ‘25, a project leader. “We were just coming up with different fundraiser ideas at first to see what we wanted to do. Eventually, we settled on doing the auction because we felt it could be something the whole community could get involved in.”

Another student leader, Reed Warner ‘25, stated, “Starting off, we all had individual roles that we did, like who would manage the finances, advertising, and planning, for example.” English department members and Entrepreneurship teacher Todd McGuire added, “The plans were to get all aspects of the event planned, from who would do what when to getting and organizing the supplies. The class came up with the plan with some suggestions from me about music and the like. I think Mr. Brown suggested the raffle.”

The students obtained auction items from a variety of sources, including students, faculty and even the Office of Student Life, with whom they collaborated to include unique experiences such as room fail passes and dress-down days. Watkins commented, “The faculty members are always willing to help, and a lot of them jumped in, donating items or offering services like Ms. Poacelli who baked a delicious carrot cake or Mr. Beni who offered to do a Rutter's Trip.”

The auction was a hit, with many students coming to the Simon Student Center to bid on unique items or just to spectate. At the peak of the auction, the student center was fully packed—a rare occurrence this year.

“Overall, it was really fun, because everyone was engaged. People were throwing out fun bids, interested in the prizes, and they liked the raffle tickets too,” Warner said.  “My favorite item was probably the pie-in-the-face,” Watkins added. “It’s free for us to do, but people always go for it. Another creative one was the custom lunch table, where someone could pick who they sit with at lunch.”

“I think it went amazing,” Mason McConney '25, another one of the organizers, said. “We got a lot of people involved, and everybody seemed really happy with what they got out of the event. That was the cool thing about it—you know, we were raising money, but also everybody got something from it.”

Attendees of the auction shared similar sentiments. Taimur Rehman ‘25 said, “I was at the auction and I had a really good time. Bought a few small things, but really I won a lot of stuff on the raffles. I got an insane amount of luck.  I thought it was enjoyable and I had a fun time raising prices even when I had no interest in buying it.” 

The auction was extremely successful; the class raised around $1,500, donating over $1250 to the cold weather shelter after covering costs. “I am glad we raised the money that we did. Even though we didn't hit our goal for $2000, raising almost $1300 for the cold weather shelter is still really good for our team.”

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