INTER-CAT MARRIAGE
In a surprising turn of events, the Northwestern Business Review revealed that your forced set-up for spring formal who vomited jungle juice all over your Rent the Runway dress is not your future husband! Yes, shocking but true: less than one percent of Northwestern students get hitched to a former classmate. After peaking at 2.5 percent in 1979, wildcat intermarriage has been on the decline, debunking a number of widely-held beliefs in our Evanston community:
If you haven’t fallen madly in love with “the one” by your final Dillo Day, there is still hope for a spouse post-grad, despite what your mother tells you.
Having chemistry with your lab partner doesn’t mean you have to have chemistry with your lab partner.
Your pledge wife/husband is not actually your real-life wife/husband.
Northwestern men and women are not the only fishes in the pond.
Your casual hookup you met after winning beer pong together is not necessarily marriage material.*
*Disclaimer: If said casual hookup was Seth Meyers, these rules need not apply.
As sarcastic as we can be about this finding, it’s noteworthy that so few students find their forever love at Northwestern. So, what really is the problem here? Some have posited the idea that students are too busy to take dating seriously, focusing too much on academics, internships and careers to devote time and energy to a relationship.
Others attribute the lack of love to bad timing. “Initially I am surprised at how extremely low that statistic is,” said Payton Danner, a junior from West Liberty, Iowa. “But the more I reflect on it, the more it makes sense. People are settling down and having kids much later in life—definitely more so than my grandparents’ generation.” And as for those actually in a relationship at NU? “I feel like this is a source of anxiety for a lot of people thinking about how their relationship might last after college,” Danner said.
Jenna Perlstein, a junior from Pound Ridge, New York, offers a similar take on the issue. “As someone who’s been in a relationship for two and a half years here, it’s super weird to like think that far in advance and know if you are the 1 percent when you’re IN it,” she said. “I talked about this article with my partner, and we didn’t actively avoid it, but it is just a weird conversation when you’re so young. You can’t tell if the relationship you’re in is a chapter or the whole damn book, ya dig?”
Sydney Molano, a current student at NU, said her parents (former Wildcats) got married post-graduation, though she doesn’t think that’s the norm. “My parents definitely represent the conservative religious demographic not super present here,” she said.
However romantic or unromantic this statistic may be, in the words of Jenny Reinsdorf, a Northwestern junior, “I have nothing funny to say. Because it’s not funny. It’s sad.”