With Valentine’s Day just days away, students can find that someone special with through the annual Match-o-matic fund-raiser. Students bubbled in personal information during the Jan. 27 home room. The cards have been sent away for tabulation and the results will be sold in Power Hour throughout Valentine’s Day week. The profits from this fund-raiser will go to the Junior Class, which will be finalizing its Prom budget next week, as the event is only about two months away. The officers expect a lot of revenue.

“Match-o-matics is a pretty important fund-raiser for a lot of reasons, but mostly because it’s a really easy way to make money because everyone in the school has the opportunity to take it and buy it,” Junior Class secretary Alyssa Feliciano said. “Match-o-matics has always been a big money maker in the past simply because curiosity gets the best of everyone and people want to know who they are most compatible with.”

Senior Melanie Temaat said she likes the Match-o-matic fund-raiser because even though she knows no one takes the results seriously, she says it is a good form of entertainment and a way to get a few laughs.

“I think it’s fun to do, and funny to see who you get paired up with,” Temaat said. “It’s a good way to support the juniors, especially because they’re paying for our Prom, and it overall just gives everyone something to talk about for a lunch period or two because everyone is comparing their matches. Sometimes you get people you never would have expected, so it’s kind of funny to see.”

Sophomore Abe Murphy said the Match-o-matics are useless because people do not tend to fill them out honestly.

“There is no use to them at all, since everyone at school just puts random answers,” he said. “None of the matches are realistic at all because you get matched with people who are the complete opposite of what you filled out.”

Sophomore Tena Gordon understands that the Match-o-matics are for fun, but expressed concern because they lack options for the LGBTQ community.

“I noticed that that they made an attempt to be trans-inclusive by giving the option of male, female and other, but I feel like it would have been better if it had said non-binary or gender queer,” Gordon said. “There was also no place for sexual orientation, and I thought that was strange, especially because it’s for Valentine’s Day.”

Most students took the Match-o-matic survey on Wednesday in their homeroom classes, although there were a number of home rooms that did not receive the survey. Because the Junior Class has to get the order in as soon as possible to  get results in by Valentine’s day, those homerooms that did not get the survey will not be able to make it up.

“Some homeroom teachers were absent or had other plans on the day that I gave out the surveys,” class sponsor Robert Klaasen said. “So unfortunately those teachers weren’t able to hand them out to their class. Some of the kids that didn’t get to take it have been coming to my classroom and filling them out.”

Freshman Isabella Nemes was one of those who didn’t have an opportunity to participate.

“I’m kind of disappointed that my homeroom didn’t get to take it,” Nemes said. ” I was looking forward to it because it’s always fun and funny to see what results you get. Last year my group of friends had a good time laughing about the results that we got, so it’s upsetting that I won’t be able to do that this year.”

By Alexa Carlos