Young people are just like the rest of us — filled with anxiety and existential dread. The survey, Dr. Atlas said, is meant to reassure them: “You’re not going to end up alone.”
The Marriage Pact has spread to 51 colleges, but not all of its matches have gotten along like Ms. Danita and Mr. Reddy. Some never reach out and never meet. And on some campuses, the gender ratio of survey takers can limit the number of matches according to sexual orientation.
Class Disrupted
Updated May 5, 2021
The latest on how the pandemic is reshaping education.
At Middlebury College, for example, 260 straight women were left without a match this year, according to The Middlebury Campus. An email and Instagram campaign was started, calling for men attracted to straight women to “be a hero” and “fill the gap.”
Many universities, including Vanderbilt and Tufts, brought the Marriage Pact to their campuses in 2020 specifically because of the pandemic, hoping to unite their fractured campuses during a year filled with social unrest.
Ameer Haider, 21, a Vanderbilt student, heard about the pact from his cousin at Duke, who also hosted the survey. He reached out to Mr. McGregor to start the matchmaking on campus after a hard year. Though the original Marriage Pact creators have a hand in making the surveys, each Marriage Pact is tailored to the demographics of each participating campus.
“I thought Vandy was ripe for something like this,” Mr. Haider said, using a nickname for the school. “Campus was increasingly isolated due to campus restrictions for Covid-19. We didn’t have a spring break, unfortunately, just due to university policy, and classes were just such a drag, honestly. Students were really, really bored, really, really numb, or maybe just overwhelmed, sort of disunited.”
