GW Marriage Pact Hailed As Success Despite Flaws
by Skylar Epstein

On March 30, the GW Marriage Pact promised to use a survey of 50 questions and psychology to match students with their ideal match on campus. Within a week over 4500 students signed up. Participants received an email with the name and GW email address of their match on April 9.
Emily Berman was one of the projects organizers: “The Marriage Pact is an organization and project created by a Stanford student that is supposed to find college students there most compatible match on campus and they allow you to submit requests to do it at your college campus. So me and my friend Hyatt, as well as two other students, all applied to bring it to our campus so GW students could take the questionnaire.”
Reactions to the Marriage Pact have been wide ranging, particularly for straight women. Several hundred women received platonic matches due to a gender disparity in the pool of participants. Haley Patton was one of these women: “So I got a friend match and I know a lot of people were disappointed with their friend matches but I was really excited especially because I was already looking for another room mate. I actually had brunch with the girl that I matched with on Sunday and we ended up clicking super well.”
Other participants were much more disappointed with their matches. Vanshika Lulla was one of them: “I didn’t end up getting a match at all. I got a friend that was a woman and while I said I wanted a friend at first I wanted a friend who was a man who I could potentially marry. In conclusion I got played and I felt very upset.”
When asked about the gender disparity of the Marriage Pact participant pool Berman said that: “I think there was a gender imbalance because GW like inherently has a gender imbalance. I believe it’s like the campus is made up of like 60 percent of women and 40 percent of men and then within those demographics people have different sexualities. So odds are there is always going to be an imbalance.”
Gender disparity issues aside, the Marriage Pact is being hailed as a success by organizers and participants alike. Berman said that “GW is now one of the super successful Marriage Pact stories across the country.”
Patton agreed that Marriage Pact had been successful not just for her but for many other students as well. She said that “I knew a couple who ended up getting each other…So that shows that the algorithm actually works.” Even Vanshika agreed that the Marriage Pact was beneficial for the GW community as a whole saying it was “cool to see that many people come together.”
Organizers say that the success of the GW Marriage Pact means that the program will likely return in the future. So students unhappy with their experience will probably have the chance to try again next year.