Freshmen flock to Wal-Mart

Friday night was Midnight Madness.\nNot the night when thousands of fans pack into Assembly Hall to watch the men's basketball team make its first appearance on the court, but the night when thousands of students pack into Wal-Mart for their first journey of the year through the corporation's hallowed halls. \nBeginning at 10 p.m. Friday night, students dressed to the (aisle) nines perused Wal-Mart's marked-down merchandise in search of the perfect sale. Linen prices were slashed, toilet cleanser marks plunged and even tires were rolled back.\nBut more than the prices and revenue, the shenanigans and tomfoolery of the college shopper made the night. \nA young woman hoola-hooped her way into a dizzy stupor. Another shopper zipped through the store on a bike. A young man serenaded random shoppers, singing into a pancake turner. Two more shoppers zipped through the store on a tandem bike.\n"I came here to make Midnight Madness better," said Ben Becker, the sophomore spatula Sinatra. "Sometimes it's not a spatula. It's fine as long as we bust it out."\nBecker's pal and musical partner senior Scott Mobley was a willing yet discriminating participant in the event.\n"It's a matter of what you need versus what you want," Mobley said. "This place plays off of what you want." \nTo entice shoppers, Wal-Mart officials not only lowered prices, they also held raffles and handed out goody bags to the first 500 visitors. By the end of the night, hundreds of CDs, posters and T-shirts had been given away. The owner of lucky ticket number 004285 won a new 20-inch television. \nStudents flooded into the store near 10 p.m., pushing cashier lines "way back." From freshmen to grad students, they came for all their needs -- light bulbs and trash cans; insoles and T-shirts; teacups and B-cups. Wal-Mart was the IU student's one-stop random stuff shop.\nFor some, Midnight Madness was a matter of finding things not to buy.\nGraduate student and knife shopper Reuben Wilson was looking for the "cheapest big one." But his roommate, senior Mike Molohon, disapproved.\n"We have four food groups in our house," Molohon said. "Cereal, Easy Mac, cereal and Easy Mac. There's nothing in our house that requires a big knife."\n-- Contact senior writer Rick Newkirk at renewkir@indiana.edu.