A Mini Las-Vegas Right Here at NJIT
What a night! The lights, the action, the magic! It’s the 4th annual NJIT Casino Night! A time to bring in your lucky dice, re-watch 21 and 007 in Casino Royale again to learn all the tricks of the trade, and go crazy; but not as crazy as those guys in the Hangover, of course.
Casino Night is a night of fun and frolicking with fake money, so we don’t have to lose sight of what our tuition money is truly intended for. Hosted by the Graduate Student Association (GSA), it occurs every fall semester. The best part is that you don’t have to travel 2 hours to Atlantic City or 3,000 miles to Las Vegas for a fun night out on the town. It’s here in our very own Campus Center Atrium, just 2 minutes away from our dorms. Started 4 years ago by then-GSA president Ankur Agrawal, Casino Night has become an NJIT graduate student tradition.
During these nights, the Campus Center is transformed into a mini Las Vegas with professional card dealers and table games set up including the popular Texas Hold ‘Em, Blackjack 21, Money Wheel of Fortune, and last but not least, the slot machines. You can win fake money from each of these games and trade them in for fantastic prizes such as candies, a whole giant box of Ferrero Rocher chocolates, a USB drive, a Walmart gift card, 2 AMC movie tickets, a hoodie, digital photo album, or even a printer!
However, the big prizes are at the very end: this year, a raffle where you could win a Kindle or an auction where you could gather with your friends to bid for the prize of the night—a second generation Nexus 7. Be warned though, bids can get pretty high! This year, there were 3 main groups trying to bid for the Nexus 7—including one group that I started with a few of my friends. The bid was quite normal in the beginning but transformed into a crazy haggle with each team trying to lure other students in the crowd with leftover money into his/her side and taking a whole army to count $26,000 on the floor. In the end, my group raised $26,000, but the winning group was able to gather a giant sum of $32,000 and quote, unquote, the highest amount of money the host has seen being bartered over all 4 years of Casino Night! Now, however crazy the night became, GSA President Zhe He reminds, “Whatever happens in Casino Night stays in Casino Night!”
Danni Chen