Virginity Auction - The New College Financial Aid?

In college, I was a struggling, debt-ridden, sleepy-eyed and over-studied student just like the majority of the thirty thousand other students who attended my university. Sure, we had the trust-fund babies who would come to school decked out in gorgeous clothes, driving the latest models of SUVs and living in the nicest apartments or dorms on campus sans roommates. The rest of us? We trudged along from class to class in some panicked state or another…worried either that our electricity would be turned off due to not paying for two months straight or worried that we would fail our economics exam because we had to work late at our jobs which helped pay for school. I am not complaining, but for any of those people who have had to take out loans or pay for their own college tuition, it is a big fat pain in the butt. Some students take out 100% of loans and focus on their studies, some students have small, part-time on-campus jobs to help ease the burden and other students go to work forty hours a week while still managing to tackle twelve to fifteen hours of studies each semester. And then there are some students that tend to get very creative about their financing.

Meet Alina Percea, an eighteen year old Romanian college student. She wishes to pay all $73,000 of her college tuition and has come up with a controversial strategy that may offer her that opportunity: she is selling her virginity. The brunette teenager who hails from Caracal, located in Olt county, is looking for bids on her offer of one full weekend of unprotected sex. At one point of the auction, she was still very far from her goal with only $7,300 being offered and three days left in the auction. On a German website, she posted her money-making ad, “I want to meet a gentle, respectful and generous man. I have a gynecologist’s certificate proving I’m a virgin.” Now, I admit, I was pretty hard-up for cash during the leanest times of my college years….the furthest I went for money, however, was participating in focus groups for the psychology department that studied social interaction. Hey, 75 bucks at that time would have fed me for one full month.

In order for Alina to agree to spend the entire weekend with the winning bidder without the use of condoms, that bidder will have to demonstrate official proof in the form of a signed health certificate that shows that he does not have any sexually transmitted diseases. Alina also has another motive for her online auction; she hopes to perhaps meet the man she will marry. Says Alina, “I want the first time I have sex to be special so I wouldn’t want it to be a quickie. The man who proves the most generous can stay with me for a full weekend but he has to pay for everything if we travel and stay in a hotel.” How very “Pretty Woman,” huh? Perhaps Alina, like Julia Roberts’ character in the movie, will also, somehow inexplicably, meet her Prince Charming. I wouldn’t hold my breath, Alina.