Do Carls Marry Carls?

Carleton’s first graduating class in 1874 consisted of just two people. And then they got married. Hence, we pride ourselves on a solid 100% marriage success rate. “So Zainab,” you might ask, “how do you find your Carl?” Well, I haven’t found mine (yet), but there are some options. 

Coming in at #1 [drumroll] is Date Knight! Around Valentine’s weekend, you can set your friends up on blind dates. Both parties get assigned paired names, like “Peanut butter and Jelly,” or “Penguin and Pebble.” Then you go about ASKING people if they are your date in the Sayles area (so embarrassing, I know). Across campus, there are events and programs that you can check out with your date, like free boba, games, ballroom dancing, and other silly things people in love do (I’m just jealous).

Date Knight is the present-day version of an ancient school tradition called Screw Your Roommate. Which was perhaps more successful at matchmaking than today’s 6-7 successful couples annually (source: trust me bro). Take, for example, our Director of Admissions, Adam Webster ’00, who actually met his wife this way when they were both students here! Around Screw Your Roommate, he threw a party with his housemates where they all dressed up in costumes to solve a murder mystery together. He ended up finding someone to solve life’s mysteries with! I love coincidences. 

Another coincidence was last week, when I met James and Elizabeth Durham ’12 at the Bald Spot: another couple who also met here as students! They are back on campus with a little child, and Elizabeth is joining Carleton as an Anthropology professor. When I asked them how they first met, I quickly learned that both parties disagreed about their origin story. While Elizabeth remembers first meeting her now husband as a prospective student, James has no recollection of that. James, however, recounts writing a paper together with Elizabeth for an American politics class in the winter of 2009. [Note that winter is important to the love stories at Carleton – the weather forces you to seek warmth among the cutie pies on campus]. It was in their sophomore year that they started dating – a love that budded on a Hogan Brothers first date, and bloomed fully when they went to a concert at St. Olaf! 

Allow me to produce further evidence of this tradition’s fruits. This weekend, I hung out with Anita Fisher-Egge’94 and Eric Egge’94, who ALSO met at Carleton around Screw Your Roommate, and ALSO do not agree with each other’s explanations of when they first met. Eric was dating Anita’s roommate, and Anita recalls mediating their breakup because they were “so horrible for each other.” “I didn’t have my eyes on him, though,” Anita clarified (are we sure we believe her?), but they fell in love and added to a long tradition of Carls marrying Carls.

Will I be a Carl who marries another Carl? Talk about peer pressure! My first term at Carleton, all the rage was for something called the “Marriage Pact.” It flooded all our emails: you could enter into this vague matchmaking system with your Carleton credentials, describe yourself, your preferences, and an algorithm would match you with a compatible partner. The system, they warned you, was not perfect: it had matched enemies before. And siblings. The Pact hasn’t made a comeback since, but I think I can change that. 

Oh, what about my story? We don’t talk about that. But, the key takeaway for you, my pookie pie prospies, is that if you are looking for love at Carleton, you may find love at Carleton, and may also find yourself gripped by the cutie traditions of our quaint little school.