Marriage Pact’s first run at Swarthmore ended with high participation and matches all across campus, with roughly 62% of students participating in the survey intended to couple up the most compatible pairs. The survey quietly spread on campus — without any official mass emails — gaining traction in friends’ group chats, unaffiliated email chains, and whispers in classrooms. But when the results were released slightly after 9 on Monday night, all of Cornell Library erupted in shouts and excitement, according to one of the two anonymous student organizers and students at the scene.
“When the email came out, people were screaming when they found out their matches, which I think is really fun,” the organizer said. “I’m interested in, next year, organizing some sort of gathering where everyone opens it together, because I know other schools do that, so maybe that could be a fun tradition.”
The organizers were “pleasantly surprised” about how the pact went, especially with the high rate of participation. One concern that arose shortly before the pact closed was whether enough straight men would fill it out, a problem that has occurred at other colleges. To address this, an email was sent midway through the week to all students who had taken the survey saying there were eleven unmatched straight women, and encouraging students to send it to male friends to balance the numbers.
Moving forward, the organizers are hoping to include more questions that account for personality. They also reiterated that the data is kept private, to encourage hesitant students to treat the pact as a fun, low-stakes activity.
“A lot of funny stories came out of it,” the organizer said. “A lot of people in relationships still took it, which, obviously, we welcome, but it was just funny. I don’t know of a single couple that ended up getting each other.”
Hannah Grace Humphreys ’24.5, however, was in the minority of students who did not take the Marriage Pact. Humphreys was unimpressed with results from other schools and remains loyal to other Swarthmore traditions.
“I decided not to take part in the Swarthmore Marriage Pact because I am a true romantic,” Humphreys said. “When I was seventeen, I chose this school because one out of five Swatties got married to each other. So I thought: ‘five boyfriends, four years. How hard could it be?’ I am still searching.”
Humphreys felt the survey was easy to take, but still wants to rely on Swarthmore traditions, such as Screw Your Roommate, and in-person interactions: “I think [Marriage Pact] has a low barrier to entry, but I also think that’s what Screw Your Roommate is for. And that is a fun Swarthmore tradition that we should lean more into, as opposed to outsourcing our cultural fun to third parties such as Marriage Pact.”
The high rate of participation in the Swarthmore Marriage Pact may suggest that Swatties are looking for connection and more than willing to accept the intervention of an algorithm, raising questions about shortcomings in the current campus dating culture. Or, the engagement in the pact may just reflect students’ eagerness to participate in new traditions and see what happens.
