Corinne Lafont ’26, the 2025 Screw Your Roommate organizer and Swarthmore senior, has never been on a Screw date. “I’ve been hesitant because it’s so public. But this year…who knows! If everyone’s on a date, then nobody’s really paying attention to me, you know?”
Lafont decided to run Screw — Swarthmore’s biannual matchmaking night — because she believes it is a reminder that even at a small school, there are still opportunities for new experiences and connections. She praised Swarthmore’s student-run culture and said the students are warm and willing to open up; this is why she thinks the tradition is still around over 40 years later.
As Lafont advertises the event, she faces an uphill battle. Her hesitancy to go isn’t unique. Everyone at Swarthmore seems afraid to get Screwed. In my own unsuccessful quest to get friends to sign up for Screw, I’ve asked whoever I can for permission to set them up with a potential fling or friend, touting the joys of making a new connection at a school of constant work and routine. But most people recoil at the thought of the awkwardness.
Public humiliation is an integral part of Screw, according to former Dean Ted Goundie in a 1996 Phoenix article. Screw, Goundie said, is a Swarthmore institution. A Phoenix editorial pledging a paper-wide Screw endorsement from 1998 promotes the event as an opportunity to escape Swarthmore’s intensity and loosen up, with the embarrassment serving as a strength rather than weakness. “With Swat gossip levels out of sight, the inaccessibility of cars, and only one ‘date place’ on campus (Paces), casual dating at Swarthmore is all but extinct. Screw addresses all three of these issues.”
Another reporter in a Feb. 17, 1989 Phoenix article wrote: “Everyone had been in an uproar for weeks. The whole social structure had been shaken to its very roots. Phone calls had been made, arrangements had fallen through. No one could agree on anyone. No, this wasn’t the realization of Marx’s prediction of a social revolution … It was time for Swarthmore’s annual ‘Screw Your Roommate’ Dance.”
Does the current approach to Screw’s humiliation as something to avoid rather than collectively embrace embody something larger? At Swarthmore, you can’t go anywhere without being observed (or self-indulgently convincing yourself you’re being observed) by every ex, classmate, boss, professor, former roommate, and second acquaintance you have. With only 1,700 people, word travels fast and nothing is unknown by strangers on campus. So look over your shoulder at all times at parties and stick to those you know.
When Marriage Pact launched last fall, it was a success. 62% of students participated. From the comfort of their rooms and friend groups on their laptop, they willingly agreed to be paired with a stranger. And then most likely never met in person. In the digital age, human connection is now more avoidable. At an already awkward school, is it going extinct?
In the pursuit to avoid embarrassment, we’ve managed to avoid the growth that comes after it. Someone sees you badly drunkenly dancing or your class crush politely declines you. So what? We fail tests and bounce back. Why not social interactions too? Isn’t part of college about making a fool of and then picking yourself off the ground?
Lafont is planning to participate in Screw this year, embracing the tradition as she prepares to graduate and move further than a 10-minute radius away from friends. “Honestly, we don’t realize how fleeting college is. Screw’s a big part of that. The fact that my friends are here and want to set me up with someone they respect, is special.”
If we want to make Swarthmore a place of spontaneity and human connection, we may have to be willing to risk a little coolness. Public humiliation, when reclaimed as a collective tradition, takes on a new power. Screw may be awkward, and students may feel like everyone is talking about them. But screw them.
