The traffic at the corner of McKinley and University avenues imitated ancient Rome on Saturday evening at the Red Bull Chariot Races.
Students dressed in a variety of costumes that matched the themes of their chariots and raced each other around a small course, each hoping to win sky diving lessons, free concert tickets or their weight in Red Bull.
Aaron Cole, a senior advertising major, participated in the races as a part of the team Rocket Power. He said the team's name came from the design of its chariot, which looked like a rocket.
"A ragtag group of three of us got together and said, 'All right, let's just do this,'" he said. "We were really nervous at first. We thought that [the chariot] wasn't going to work. We thought it might break, but as soon as we took off and we hit that corner, we were going so hard into it that the wheels skidded."
Cole said his team's chariot drifted so severely that the crowd cheered as the it rounded the course's only turn.
The chariot races was the last event of McKinley Week, a five-day series of festivities the Cardinal Charity Committee organized to raise money for Specialized Alternatives for Families and Youth of Muncie, an organization that works to provide treatment foster care and similar services.
Ryan Dillon, a member of CCC, said the committee chose to raise money for SAFY because it is not well known in the community.
"We felt like what [SAFY is] doing is a really good thing and we wanted to be able to do something to help out and get that kind of going - to get a little more notoriety for them to help them out, too," the sophomore economics and finance major said.
Dillon said the CCC hopes to make McKinley Week annual, and he encourages people to begin considering fun events for next year.
Jeff Hardesty, a student representative for Red Bull, said teams had to pay $25 to participate in the races, which raised a total of $300 for SAFY.
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