In honor of Valentine's Day, several students in the Mass Row residence cluster have planned a BlitzMail dating service called "Do You Have a Date?" for this most hallowed of Hallmark holidays.
Kazunori Murata '97, an undergraduate advisor in Massachusetts Hall, said he thought it would be fun to create a dating service, with the match-ups being sent back to all participants this morning.
"We thought it would be cool to do for Valentines' Day ... it started out as just a cluster thing, but we thought it would be nice to make it campus-wide," Murata said.
In a BlitzMail message sent to all Mass Row residents, as well as to many other students, Murata asked all participants to submit personal descriptions and information including gender, height, class, major and sexual preference.
Once these were compiled, he sent a second e-mail message yesterday morning with the profiles of all respondents.
Participants were then instructed to send back at least 10 top picks from among the available candidates by 6:00 p.m. last night.
"All descriptions were anonymous," according to Jacob Waldman '97, Mass Row's programming assistant, so students did not know the names of the people they were selecting.
The organizers then put all the choices together and matched up each person with a prospective date.
However, as the disclaimer at the bottom of the message read, "Due to the possibility that there will be uneven gender parity, not everyone may get a date."
Even though there was no guarantee of a date, many people were still willing to take part in the dating service.
Elizabeth Mullin '00 entered it "just for fun" and said she will most likely meet up with the person with whom she is matched.
To many, it seemed that only members of the Class of 2000 would be willing to participate in such an event.
"I think freshmen in general are much more likely to participate in cluster-wide activities," David Gacioch '00 said.
But Mullin disagreed, and said she had noticed many upperclassmen getting involved, despite originally believing the only participants would be freshmen.
This matchmaking event is primarily a Mass Row event, but the BlitzMail message worked itself around campus.
Waldman said he was happy with the number of people who participated.
Today, one lucky couple from all the participants will be selected for a prize -- a free date package. As to how the two winners will be selected, Waldman said, "We'll get all the applicants together and then go from there."
