Branner Hall will be hosting their first annual speed dating event 8:30 p.m. to 10 p.m. today — Valentine’s Day — in Branner lounge. The speed-dating event will have a $2.00 cover charge, and all donations will be given to Casa Hogar Orphanage in Oaxaca, Mexico. At the event, males and females will have two minutes each to speak to one another.

“So far about 40 people have responded to say that they are coming,” says Branner Hall president Victoria Harman, a freshman.

“There was certainly much diversity in personality, and four minutes is not enough time to get to know someone, although it was fun to meet new people,” says senior Maria Murcia who attended the Lyman speed dating event last Friday. “It’s overwhelming to get to know 20 people in such a short span of time.”

Many Stanford students might have first been introduced to the idea of speed dating through the Hollywood film “Hitch,” starring Will Smith. However, the practice has its roots in religion.

Los Angeles Rabbi Yaacov Deyo invented speed dating in 1998 as a way for marriage-focused young Jewish singles to meet, according to many dating service Web sites. It was conceived as a way to ensure that Jewish singles could meet each other in large cities where they were outnumbered by non-Jews. It has been made more popular by its use on television dating game shows.

Speed Dating has since lost its religious connections and spread throughout the world as a novel way for busy single people to meet each other without any of the stigma associated with traditional dating agencies — perfect for the busy American lifestyle. In the United States it is now an enormously popular phenomenon with speed dating agencies spreading throughout the country.

The basic idea is that an equal number of men and women attend a venue; each person spends between five and 10 minutes chatting to each member of the opposite sex, and then decides which people they would like to see again. The organizers facilitate an exchange of details if there is a match.

The original format involved men sitting along one side of a long table with the women lined up along the other, every few minutes the men would shift down one space. Most speed dating services still operate according to this production-line approach.

“People should come because speed dating is really sketchy under any other context but fun on Valentine’s Day,” says freshman Jordan Gilchrist. “And it will just be something really fun to do if you’re not with someone. Get rid of all the Stanford rumors that you can’t find love at Stanford.”