Only at Penn have I ever been asked to rate the accuracy of a statement like “I take control in bed” after “I approve of President Trump.”
It’s 2 a.m. on a Monday night, and these questions are two of many promising to help find me a partner this “cuffing season” on the matchmaking platform Penn Date Drop. As cheesy as it sounds, I took the survey hoping to find my first college relationship or fling. To my surprise, 2,774 other students at the time felt a similar way.
Another incentive was the chance at redemption after my Penn Marriage Pact ended with only a name floating somewhere in an email inbox. Results like these left me questioning the criteria of compatibility these algorithms claim to master. How do politics and sex, for example, bear the same weight in finding your perfect match?
For someone like me, the promise of a match for life appears futile, only leaving users with further questions of the site’s purpose. Instead, Penn Marriage Pact, with all of its infamy and Sidechat comments, reveals an underlying reality most Penn students wouldn’t want to hear: We’re just like everyone else. Responses to the pact, if not used to find your suitable match, at least serve to further this notion. Despite the fact that Penn students pride themselves on their intelligence and their ability to engage in intellectual discourse, the desire to utilize it within our interpersonal relationships is our shortcoming. Relationships must materialize on some kind of common ground. Its most tangible reality? In the realm of politics.
Statistics from the 2024 Penn Marriage Pact only strengthen this claim, with many of its numbers aligning with those of Gen Z as a whole. Take, for instance, dating across political parties: Among the students who participated in last year’s pact, 61% of socialists refused to date a Republican—at the national level, 60% of Gen Z across the country wouldn’t date someone of the opposing political party.
Political Science professor Diana Mutz doesn’t bat an eye at these results. “Married couples have always been more likely to agree than disagree on politics,” she states, “and that’s because people are drawn to others who have similar views. It doesn’t necessarily mean they’re picking their spouse based on politics, but if you’re a really politically active person, it may be a way that you meet your spouse [that way].”
Still, politics’ amplified presence in today’s dating scene makes it more salient than in the past. This trend has become difficult to ignore for some—in many cases, politics has become a prime talking point at the dinner table. Rather than combating this trend, popular dating apps and matchmaking sites have tried to capitalize off of it.
Tinder launched its Take Action Center in 2024, allowing users to add stickers to their profiles displaying the issues they cared about. Conservative dating app The Right Stuff prompts users with their thoughts on “liberal lies” and what happened on Jan. 6. Now, sites like Penn Marriage Pact and Penn Date Drop are following suit.
On these sites, your views on foreign aid are treated with the same importance as your level of extroversion. Your major matters as much as your environmental consciousness. Your desire for children is as important as your thoughts on wealth redistribution. And, given the 2024 Penn Marriage Pact’s finding that conservative students are the most willing to take control during sex, political affiliation becomes linked to behavior in the bedroom.
When put into perspective, doesn’t it all seem bizarre?
Politics’ amplified salience in the dating scene creates an environment where people are “more likely worried about [the] potential conflict that comes from having a significant other of a different party,” as professor Mutz observes. Because of that, perceived political stereotypes in potential partners become dealbreakers, and responses to questions on topics like free market capitalism and reparations are deciding factors. Ensuring that your future partner nods along to all your political beliefs comes before resolving any other conflict. Disagreement, in this sense, has no place in romance.
Still, the danger of refusing to hear the other side is something that many see but fail to combat. And because of it, sites like Penn Marriage Pact and Penn Date Drop craft matches based on similarity under the guise of “compatibility.”
On the one hand, similarities promise a safe, easy dynamic. But what happened to the pitfalls and challenges that come with long–term romantic relationships? At elite universities like Penn, we pride ourselves in intellectual grit and curiosity—but why do these have to stay in the classroom? Allowing these attitudes to seep into our interpersonal relationships would serve us well, both romantically and socially.
Instead of relying on algorithms and empty promises, rely on the environment around you. “University campuses have so many people in your same age range that it’s so easy [to find people] without anything online, and meeting people that [way is something] I find college students an odd target for,” professor Mutz says.
To that, Penn students should consider if they want their college relationships to be with clones of my idealized selves. Many students come from conservative backgrounds, liberal ones, and many in-between. With this reality, political disagreement should become a norm, not an obstacle holding students back from forming relationships with those from all sides of the aisle.
In that way, relationships can become both a romantic and an intellectual pursuit, with messy disagreements rather than a silenced utopia. In the end, longevity in a college relationship isn’t measured by your happiness in the honeymoon phases of relationships—it’s all the disagreements underlying it that prove the strength to sustain a romantic dynamic. In it, politics shouldn’t be an exception.
So next year, when you fill out the Penn Marriage Pact or encourage a friend to sign up for Penn Date Drop, would you swipe for the left or the right, and will you take the chance to understand what each side is all about?
