It is certainly not unusual for college students to go to great lengths to ensure their shot at education. Allowing themselves to get bogged down with student loans and working themselves ragged to pay their way through college is no foreign concept to many students whose parents cannot, or will not, bear the hefty burden for their sons and daughters. But going to more extreme measures to pay tuition has always been a somewhat less common, or at least less talked about option — that is, until now. Throughout the past several months, there has been plenty of buzz in the popular media about Natalie Dylan, the year-old student from San Diego who decided to sell her virginity over the Internet in order to pay her graduate school tuition. She arranged to have the culmination of her auction occur at a location in Nevada where prostitution is legal. The end of her story remains to be seen, but her situation has raised many eyebrows among college students.

This is empowering her. I am so saddened by things like this. I just think its another example to show how youth workers are so important.

A virginity auction is an auction , often publicized online, where a person seeks to sell their virginity. The winning bidder will win the right to be the first to have intercourse with the person. Often the authenticity of such auctions is subject to question, and it is not later verified whether the auction was successfully completed. A number of high-profile auctions such as the auction of "Natalie Dylan" and auction of Catarina Migliorini were never completed.