On Monday Sept. 30, a mysterious survey asking students about topics ranging from their religion to their sex lives started circulating around Swarthmore College. No emails or links were sent to the student body, but through word of mouth, by 8:30 that night, 170 students had taken the survey. Two days later, 511 people had filled out the survey. Marriage Pact, an annual survey that is new to Swarthmore but has achieved popularity at over 80 colleges across the country, aims to pair students based on a 40-question survey. It uses the Gale-Shapley matching algorithm and students’ responses about politics, personal values, and other preferences to create pairings. People will be informed of their partners after the survey closes on Sunday, a week after its release.
This is the first year Marriage Pact has been run at Swarthmore. Marriage Pact’s Swarthmore iteration is an attempt by two students to create a new tradition and improve the Swattie dating culture. One of the students, who prefers to remain anonymous, thought Swarthmore’s status as a small school would make this project especially interesting. They’re curious to see how many people will complete the survey and hope to achieve participation from at least 50% of the student body. They noted the algorithm will generate matches with higher compatibility if more students participate.
“If you both are single in 40 years, theoretically, since you share all of the deepest, most core values in common, you should be the most compatible to join a marriage pact,” the student said in an interview with the Phoenix.
However, the student also encourages students to think of the Marriage Pact as an exciting activity to do with friends and peers, and not necessarily a high-stakes dating game. It can even be taken by people in relationships to find platonic matches. The launch at Swarthmore was shrouded in mystery, and looks different from school to school. On Oct. 2, students who had completed the survey were given an option to enter their friends’ emails and anonymously share the pact. Although the Swarthmore students who launched the pact worked with a team based at Stanford — where the pact was created as an economics class project — they were able to customize some survey questions after reflecting on the Swarthmore student population.
“I just feel like this is a nerd school,” said the organizer. “People think a lot of thoughts here, and so hopefully, people will put a lot of thought into it.”
Some questions include how much someone appreciates prioritizing ambition over everything else, how much someone wants to be worshiped by their partner, and how much smarter the respondent feels they are than other Swarthmore students. Data from Swarthmore can also be compared to other schools after the survey closes to see if personalities across schools differ. For example, a recent article showed students at Georgetown are slightly more likely to be in relationships than students at UCLA.
The pact doesn’t take into account factors such as age, and there is nothing to stop siblings or exes from being paired. Although Marriage Pact’s website touts select stories of lifelong partners united through the survey, social media videos of people discovering their matches describe the reveal as simply an exciting activity to experience with friends. The organizer is hoping that there will not only be little stress around taking the survey, but also that it will reduce stress around dating at Swarthmore.
“I think people feel that any decision they make in terms of either dating or sex at Swat bears a lot of weight,” they said. “Because the campus is so small, it feels like everyone is interconnected and dating within Swat is very daunting. I know I feel that personally. Marriage Pact is just a way… to remove that seriousness from [dating], because you didn’t choose. The gods of Marriage Pact presented you with your perfect match.”
They’re hoping Marriage Pact is popular enough at Swarthmore to continue for years to come. The first launch involves the most work, but in following years other students can be recruited to help coordinate the effort. The organizers are also unaware of the responses and able to participate like everyone else. The anonymous student organizer says, for their own match, they’re looking to have fun with friends filling out the survey — and maybe find something more.
“I’m not going in with any specific hopes, maybe make a friend or more if circumstances allow,” they said. “Who knows who I’ll be matched with. But that’s the exciting part.”
