David Wang | Student Life

Last February, thousands of WashU students submitted the survey for Datamatch, a dating and friendship matching service that took over campus. When the results were published on Feb. 14, students laughed at their matches or grimaced at being matched with people they knew were incompatible. Students quickly discounted the results of Datamatch: the survey questions were meant to make you chuckle more than give accurate results. By the end of the week, the matches had largely been forgotten. 

On Monday, Sept. 23, at 8:30 a.m., a project called Marriage Pact opened for all WashU students. Marriage Pact, created by Stanford undergraduate students as a final project in an economics class, is an algorithm that matches students with one another based on their survey responses. This program, which was founded in 2017, is active at 88 schools, and 65 of them consider Marriage Pact an annual tradition. The official Marriage Pact website has a section dedicated to articles about successful matches, from long-term relationships to friendships. 

Despite the name, which indicates a commitment between two people to get married should they not find love by a certain age, the service simply matches you with a fellow student, and any follow-up interactions are optional. 

Before the results come out on Sunday, Sept. 29, all interested students will fill out the survey, answering questions such as “Is it more important to protect someone’s feelings than to tell the truth?” or whether they would end a friendship over differing political views. 

While people are waiting for their matches to be released, the Marriage Pact website offers an intriguing and constantly-updating leaderboard of initials. The initials of the 10 most well-matched pairs are listed alongside their compatibility percentage. Students are then free to guess who the combos are. 

Sophomore Justin Strugger is responsible for introducing the Marriage Pact to the university. Strugger found out about Marriage Pact through his sister after she participated in it at the University of Rochester. Strugger explained that his sister’s successful experience with Marriage Pact sparked his interest in bringing it to WashU.

“[Strugger’s sister] got a 99.9% match with this girl, Andrea, and they became best friends. They roomed the following year, and she still considers Andrea to be one of her closest friends. Four years later, Marriage Pact ended up doing an article and interviewing both of them for the website.”

 Quite literally on a whim, Strugger applied to bring Marriage Pact to WashU. 

“This summer out of boredom, I saw a button [on the website] that said, ‘apply to bring it to your school.’ I hit the button, and here we are,” Strugger said.

The organizers enthusiastically supported his interest in the project, and Strugger got to work. Strugger sees Marriage Pact as an outlet for students who want a fun distraction from everyday anxieties. 

“My goal for this project was to make something special for WashU,” Strugger told Student Life. “Having this outlet to fill out this fun survey and be part of this cool project could mean a lot to some people. [Also], it’s a good story to tell your mom.” 

In addition to himself, Strugger recruited two others to assist him with implementing Marriage Pact. Sophomore Dylan Erenfryd and junior Margaret Foley signed on to help market the project on campus. Alongside the Marriage Pact coordinators from the home company at Stanford, the team worked together to ensure the launch runs smoothly.

Their strategy involves communicating with as many people as possible and targeting campus groups to spread the word.

“[We’ve been] reaching out to a capella groups, sports organizations, and people of all different interests and ages to get it to as many people as possible. The strategy has been [to] use word of mouth. Reach out to all of your friends. Tell them to reach out to their friends. Make sure everyone has heard about Marriage Pact and knows that they have the opportunity to be a part of this really cool program,” Erenfryd said.

In targeting all of these groups, Foley emphasizes that Marriage Pact is available for everyone and doesn’t need to be taken as seriously as the name suggests.

“Something I liked about Marriage Pact is that it isn’t just for people who are single and looking for a long-term partner. It’s for anyone, whether you’re single, in a relationship, [or between the two]. It’s really meant to be a fun thing for everyone to get involved with,” Foley said. 

WashU students seem to have positive thoughts on the new program. Senior Evan Alexis, who heard about the website from his interview with Student Life, said that the project sounded “pretty fun.” He expressed that he would be interested in looking into it. 

In favor of the new program, junior Mia Burkholder explains that Datamatch did not accomplish what she wanted from it and that Marriage Pact may offer a more legitimate avenue for finding a match.

“I was really excited about Datamatch my freshman and sophomore years, but then was disappointed by how it ended up going. I’m excited to see something that’s a little less silly,” Burkholder said.

While open to other people filling out the survey, sophomore Maya Santhanam has decided to abstain from Marriage Pact because she prefers meeting people organically. Maya believes that the randomness with which people connect is very special.

“I like the [authenticity] of a first interaction in person,” said Santhanam. “It’s exciting and organic, and it feels like the world is coming together in a beautiful way for you.”

At the time of writing this article, 1,038 WashU students have completed the Marriage Pact survey. Strugger, Foley, and Erenfryd hope to reach at least half the school and cement Marriage Pact as a school tradition. 

“It really is low stakes fun to meet someone at your school that could potentially be the best person for you to spend the rest of your life with. I think that if people were to look into it, they would like what they see,” Erenfryd said.