Ball State University placed in the top 10 for the Victoria's Secret Pink Collegiate Collection this week.
Ball State made it up to ninth place this week in the online voting contest for colleges to be included in the Victoria's Secret Pink Collegiate fall line.
A surge of voting started in November after sophomore architect major Tiffany Lim and sophomore exercise science major Jenny Vegh created a Facebook group to encourage students to vote for Ball State.
"We established the group on Nov. 29 and we were in 192nd place," Lim said. "In 19 days, we made it into the top 25."
Ball State is currently in the ninth spot with less than 4,000 votes left until the eighth spot.
Whichever college wins first place will receive a concert and the top 10 will have their college included in the Victoria's Secret Pink Collegiate Line, Lim and Vegh said.
They got the idea to nominate Ball State after seeing Indiana University's apparel in a Victoria Secret store last fall and hearing about the B-Town Bash that Victoria's Secret threw for IU, they said.
Lim and Vegh started the Facebook group and started advertising the contest in Woodworth Complex. After their group started gaining 100 members every hour, they decided to advertise in more residence halls, they said.
"We then went to [DeHority Complex] and then again, we started getting 100 more members every hour," Lim said. "People started to invite more and more and it just kept rolling."
Almost 2 months later, the Facebook group has more than 8,300 members and a Facebook event they created reminding people to vote daily has over 1,700 people "attending."
Vegh said she wants the Pink line to start selling Ball State apparel because Victoria's Secret's gear would be more fitted toward women where as the apparel often found in bookstores is unisex.
Victoria's Secret would also come out with new Ball State apparel every season, Lim added.
They said the concert seems to be a big motivator for a lot of the voters as well, especially after they uploaded pictures of the B-Town Bash to the group.
The possibility has led IU and Purdue University students to vote for Ball State for the chance of another concert win in Indiana since both schools already have their own Pink line.
Vegh said a lot of guys have been voting for Ball State as well, although their reasoning is more along the lines of seeing models in person and the chance of receiving free T-shirts at the bash.
Lim and Vegh said students, their friends and their families should continue to vote for Ball State even though the university is in ninth place. Saint Louis University currently holds the top spot with a little over 165,000 votes, but Ball State has gotten 57,000 votes in almost two months and has a chance to win, they said.
Ball State also has the largest Facebook group devoted to voting in the competition, which makes a win look attainable, Vegh said.
The exact date of the end of the competition is unknown, but last year's contest ended in February, Lim and Vegh said. Their Facebook event ends on Feb. 16, but they encourage students to vote daily as long as they can.
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