Trinity College Marriage Pact - Brewing pure romance around Campus?
By Catherine Bourke
If you have been on yik yak during the past few weeks, you may have seen posts regarding a “Marriage Pact”. The label is striking, as college students are (hopefully) not considering getting married any time soon; but this “pact” is meant to pair you up with a random romantic prospect on campus who you can hypothetically keep around if you find yourself stuck once the time comes to make the big commitment. With its vastly specific questionnaire including questions pertaining to politics, religion, and wants and needs in a relationship, the pact intends to place you with your “perfect match”. After a wait that went a little longer than intended, the results for the marriage pact came out over Spring Break. A new wave of romance may be surfacing among campus due to the multitude of fresh pairings, or maybe this is only turning out to be the case for a small percentage. After all, March is the month of St. Patrick’s Day, but did “The Marriage Pact” get students who filled it out as lucky as they hoped?
“The Marriage Pact” has all its intentions in the right place. The idea of gaining a romantic prospect on campus you probably didn't know before who happens to share nearly identical values as you do is quite appealing if you are single and looking to date. The survey was originally invented by two Stanford students who created the questionnaire for an economics final. The students aimed to create a form of an online dating service that goes deeper than more surface level platforms such as Tinder and Hinge. They were shocked at the success of their questionnaire, as it spread beyond Stanford University and reached 88 college campuses in the United States, now including Trinity. Part of what makes the pact so appealing is that no matter how ready you are for a relationship, it serves as an easy way to meet somebody new who you could potentially really like. Even if you are not ready for a serious commitment, filling out the pact is fun, from its humorous questions ranging from how special you think you are to how desperate you are for a relationship. There is no pressure attached, and no obligation to actually date, or if you take the pact literally, marry the person you are matched with. If you happened to get a match made in heaven, then you are among the rare lucky ones; but if you weren’t thrilled, then the hope the pact may have momentarily instilled within you will be easy to let go of.
At a small school like Trinity, there was plenty of room for error in the drawing pool of “The Marriage Pact.” I often find myself shocked at how connected our campus is. No matter where you go and who you meet, someone always knows someone you know. With this being the case, it is excruciatingly easy to cross paths with people you may have an awkward past with and would rather not see. It was inevitable for the release of the pact results to reopen some old wounds or cause some brief drama. Maybe you got paired with your freshman year hookup (awkward!), or your lab partner who you never seemed to get along with. Or, maybe getting paired with someone you previously knew served as a blessing in disguise. Sometimes all it takes is a little push for two friends or acquaintances to get together. Even if you happened to get paired with your friend's ex-situationship or that person who ghosted you over snapchat, I hope you at least got some amusement out of your match. Another flaw in the drawing system is that there were significantly more females than males who filled out the questionnaire, making for a disproportionate selection pool. A good amount of people simply ended up with “friend matches” due to the unequal amount of straight men and women. While this diminishes the purpose of being paired with a potential romantic interest which may have caused some disappointment, there is no loss in gaining a new friendship.
“The Marriage Pact” had students on campus buzzing throughout the 3-week period it was available to be filled out. The gossip that excitedly circulated on yik-yak or was discussed in Mather booths just proves how relevant the intentions of the pact are for college students. Everybody wants genuine love, and in a society where the presence of online dating services, social media, and situationships seems to be taking over, it can feel as if it is becoming harder to get it. “The Marriage Pact” provides hope that there is someone for you on campus even though you may not have found them yet, and it erases some anxiety that could arise out of the fear of ending up alone. Even though today’s dating world can be a chaotic mess, if “The Marriage Pact” did not give you the partner of your dreams, there is no reason to hold your head down. Contrary to the misleading name of the pact, we are very young and still discovering ourselves, and there is no pressure to be settling on huge commitments right now. “The Marriage Pact” is a fun and creative way to connect our college campus and give us something engaging to talk about, and no matter who you got paired up with, remember that there is someone for everyone.
