While they say they're not really looking for love, at press time, over 1138 Bowdoin students had already joined Bowdoin's new online dating site, BowdoinMatch.com, since its launch last Friday.
The site, originally created by two Wesleyan University students and recently licensed to Bowdoin Student Government, uses a set of 39 questions including "work ethic," "sex drive," and "religiosity" to calculate students' "compatibility" with others. Students have only one chance to choose their own responses to these questions but may alter the qualities of their "ideal match" as many times as they wish.
Josh Jones '04 said he signed on "only because a couple of my buddies were doing it, and it seemed like it'd be entertaining."
"It's fun to play around with the questions," he added. "It's just funny to watch how it changes when you change an answer."
Other students agreed with Jones. Elly Pepper '05 said the site is fun and not to be taken too seriously. "I signed up because I thought it'd be funny," she said.
Website designer Dan Stillman said he and his friend Matt Eaton, currently seniors at Wesleyan, started the original site, WesMatch.com, in response to Dan's "lack of a girlfriend." They launched the site on the Wesleyan campus in April 2002; since then, "people from all over have been emailing us, begging us to start this at their schools," Stillman said.
Stillman and Eaton reworked their copyrighted site to integrate multiple colleges, allowing students to match with students from other schools. They recently licensed versions of the site at four schools including Bowdoin, Colby, Williams, and Oberlin.
Representative Mark Lucci '04 said BSG paid WesMatch under $500 to create and maintain BowdoinMatch through the end of the semester.
Students' interest in the site often relates to what many students find the most intriguing-or funny-aspect of the site-its ability to secretly match two people who are both interested in each other. The website describes its "match message" as a secret date request: It can only be revealed if the person you "match message" sends you a match message as well. After creating an account and answering the questions, students can customize their profiles, uploading photos of themselves and entering personal information like their hometown, Instant Message username, and major.
While Stillman and Eaton tag their site as a "compatibility matching service," some Bowdoin students doubt it will actually create couples through its "matching." "I think everyone's just taking it as a joke," Brooks Boucher '05 said. "I don't think anything's really going to happen."
Despite some assertions, the website, with its extensive and increasing assortment of features and users, has caught on quickly among Bowdoin students. Currently, approximately 67 percent of the student body is registered with BowdoinMatch.com. "Everybody's doing it," Marcus Pearson '05 said.
Despite the compatibility site's popularity, students' motivations for logging on rarely include a genuine hope for a date.
"I just think it's so funny...and such a great procrastination tool," Jane Cullina '04 said.
"I helped my friend sign up because we were bored," Barbara Condliffe '04 said.
Aside from its entertainment value, could the site provide any success stories? Will BowdoinMatch affect the Bowdoin "dating scene?"
"No, I really doubt it will change anything. I don't think people really date here. They just have really serious relationships or they hook up," Pepper said. "I guess [BowdoinMatch] might make people hook up more, if they're looking at lots of names and pictures of people."
Some said they believed there was a small chance BowdoinMatch might work.
"I feel like you could see people talking about 'who's on the top of your list,' and that getting out, and somehow people getting together," Condliffe said.
"I think it's possible, maybe for one or two people, if those people take it really seriously," Cullina said.
"It has the potential to materialize, I suppose. But not for me," Pearson said.
Only a few have rejected the site. "It'd be kind of like a blind date, which I'm not into...I believe in fate, not match.com," one student said.
While it's too soon to see the impact of the site, Stillman said over the past two years, WesMatch has "definitely become a part of the community at Wesleyan." He said the site has led to "WesMatch moments" where people will run into others on campus and say, "Wait, you're Joe Robinson? You're my top WesMatch!"
Stillman and Eaton plan to continue running the site following their graduation this May and to make the network "even more fun" by adding more features and schools.