Though cuffing season is over, the prospect of love is still a popular topic at Brandeis. Brandeis Confessions is filled with posts of pining people giving an anonymous whine about their crush. Bumble stickers and flyers litter this campus telling you to “make a buzz!” Now, the Brandeis Entrepreneurship and Tech Association (BETA) is bringing a new dating service to campus: The Brandeis Marriage Pact.
Run by Sammy Malley ’24, Eyal Cohen ’24 and Young Wang ’24, BETA “seeks to nurture student creativity and innovation by providing resources and a community for students of all backgrounds to pursue new ideas and ventures,” said Cohen in an interview with The Brandeis Hoot. Their current project: to successfully help Brandeis students “find love.”
Launched a week ago on Instagram, @brandeismarraigepact, the Brandeis Marriage Pact wants to help students “find a connection stronger than eduroam,” as stated in a post from March 1.
To participate in the Marriage Pact system, students first fill out a questionnaire. Questions range from personal information—like religion or political leanings—to values—like thoughts on family—to sexual preferences. For example, one question presents the scenario, “If there were a red light, but no one was on the road, I would go.” Participants are then asked to decide how strongly they agree with this statement on a scale of one to seven, from “No way” to “Vroom Vroom.”
“The questions are based on psychological and sociological research into what’s actually important when it comes to predicting the long-term success of a relationship—each question, broken down to its core, taps into values that are essential to be compatible with your partner,” said Cohen.
From there, you are matched with “your best match on campus,” according to the Brandeis Marriage Pact website. “We can’t promise you a match made in heaven, but we can promise a match made via groundbreaking algorithms and a little linear algebra. Swoon!” Cohen didn’t reveal the mysterious workings behind the algorithm, but he mentioned that it uses “cutting-edge research from psychology, economics and computer science.”
The idea of a Marriage Pact is not unique to Brandeis. This movement started at Stanford University, and, according to Cohen, has since has expanded to over 70 other schools—including Princeton, Tufts, Yale and Harvard. The Marriage Pact Medium blog has about 50 articles, many of which are dedicated to the success stories of their platform.
“One of the problems we noticed on campus is a lack of cohesion among students,” responded Cohen when asked about the choice to bring the Marriage Pact to Brandeis. “We believe that Marriage Pact is an incredibly fun way to bring the entire school together, and it’s a nice proof of concept for what BETA can achieve in the future!”
At the time of writing, the Brandeis Marriage Pact has 827 submissions, according to the live tracker on their website. Cohen said that BETA hopes to reach about half of current undergraduates with this project.
Cohen, the website and the Marriage Pact Instagram all agree: this pact is not binding. All three sources make it clear that the future of each pairing relies on the individuals involved. As the Instagram FAQ highlight reads, “Once you receive your match email, it’s up to you what happens next (though we suggest reaching out. Nothing to lose, everything to gain.)”
If you’re ready to let science try to solve love, be sure to complete the questionnaire by March 6.
And maybe, this matchmaker, matchmaker, will find you a find, catch you a catch. Perhaps the algorithm can look through its book and find you a perfect match.
