Friday, November 22, 1996
DATING:
Lack of eligible young bachelors, ethnic preferences stand in
way
When I first applied for and was selected as a Viewpoint
columnist, I wanted to focus on Latino/a dating on campus and on
all the issues which complicate it. I intended to be a "light" and
"special interest" writer more than anything  not one to
blast MEChA and stir up controversy. I keep telling my editor that
I’m the little jalapeno pepper in the salad bowl that is
Viewpoint.
Last year, as a part of Education 180, I did an independent
research project on dating within the Latino community. It was
supposed to be 20 pages, but it ended up being 65.
You might ask what inspired such a long paper on dating (a
really trying summer, the loss of two friends and a guy who took me
to the movies with his parents on the second "date"), but I know
that my research subjects and many other students as well, Latino
or otherwise, have asked themselves these same questions.
I started with a research study done in the 1950s at Cornell. It
found that in the ’50s, college served as a "marriage market" for
the wealthy in the same way that high school was one for the poor
and middle classes. In the ’70s, as more people gained access to
higher education and postponed marriage in pursuit of college
degrees, the university still retained its "marriage market"
quality.
In the ’90s, economic necessity requires many of us to pursue
graduate degrees. In other words, at our age, no one wants to get
emotionally attached for fear of the nasty breakups which
inevitably occur when we go our separate ways to medical school,
law school or graduate programs. College is no longer the place to
find a spouse  graduate school is. The study also found that
engagements were most likely to occur at large, public
co-educational universities (as opposed to at single-sex
institutions).
The study found that men and women have preconceived ideas about
when they will marry, with men choosing older ages and women
choosing younger ones. Also, men and women already have many ideas
in place about sex, religion and children, and they seek partners
with similar backgrounds. The study found that people who date
often tend to marry earlier in life while late bloomers marry
later. Since many of us are postponing running down the aisle,
we’re not dating as much.
For my study, I began by interviewing Latinos and Latinas to
make sure I was hitting on the right issues and not just on my own
assumptions. I later formed a three-page questionnaire, which was
answered by a random sample. The following are the conclusions I
came up with after analyzing all my data.
The main hypotheses were that UCLA as a whole is not conducive
to dating, that there were specific issues within the Latino
community complicating matters and that there were fundamental
communication problems. Additional hypotheses were formed about the
the perceptions that Latinos and Latinas held about each other,
dating issues outside the Latino community and expectations
regarding dating relationships.
Right now, let’s talk about logistics.
As a university, UCLA is not conducive to dating. Newsflash!
 Of the 23, 914 undergrads at UCLA, 52 percent are women and
48 percent are men. This doesn’t reveal too much except that it
shows 1,000 women out in the cold. The sad thing is that 400 of
these women are Latinas!
Among Latinos in the College of Letters and Sciences, which
houses 90 percent of the 4,080 Latinos, 2,080 are female while the
remaining 1,606 are male. That’s a ratio of five women for every
four men.
Among small ethnic communities here  these include Latinos
, African Americans, Pilipinos, Iranians, Indians, Armenians and
Pacific Islanders, it is difficult to meet someone of the same
ethnic group. Let’s be honest  that’s where most of us spend
the majority of our time.
The numbers got more complicated when I examined specific
schools. There are few Latinos and Latinas within Theater, Film and
Television as well as in Arts and Architecture. One respondent
attributed his dating problems dating to a lack of Latinas in his
major. Within the engineering program, there are 107 Latinos and 71
Latinas. That’s a ratio of 11 to 7. Makes me wish I had gone into
engineering.
The questionnaire found that in general, it is easy to meet
people at UCLA (88 percent of all respondents, 78 percent of men
and 90 percent of women), despite the fact that large lectures and
classes make it hard. However, academic demands make it hard to
date (66 percent of all respondents, 63 percent of men and 70
percent of women).
Latinos/as varied greatly on the statement "It is hard to meet a
UCLA Latino/a whom I would like to date." Men disagreed by 35
percent, with 43 percent not responding, while women agreed by 60
percent, with 20 percent not responding.
So in other words, there are many logistic factors that
influence dating on campus, such as who is in your major and small
populations of ethnic groups.
The Latino community itself is complicated by internal matters.
We are generally viewed as cliquish by other campus groups. This
issue, specifically with regard to the Chisme Network, was
discussed in my last column.
In order to determine to what degree Latinos and Latinas at UCLA
associated with the Latino community here, I presented a question
in which respondents rated themselves on a scale of 1 to 9. A 1
denoted contact solely with UCLA students who were not Latino,
while a 9 indicated contact solely with UCLA students who were
Latino.
The majority of respondents (42 percent) were in the middle
(4-7) range. A fair number of respondents (38 percent) reported
high interaction within the UCLA Latino community by citing the
high end of the scale (7-9).
We need to be honest on the issue of interracial dating. My
parents would be equally pissed off if I brought home an African
American Muslim as they would be if I brought home a Jewish white
boy. They want Mexican  Mexican and Catholic.
Interracial issues can limit who we choose to date. Women were
more likely to "prefer to date people of various backgrounds" (50
percent of women), despite sensing more pressure than men to date
solely within the Latino community, while men felt that there was
no additional pressures for Latinas. It is significant to note that
while Latinos compared dating Latinas with dating other women on
campus, the same never came up as a topic among Latinas  it
was as though this option did not exist.
There you have it, Part 1 of a two-part series. As for
solutions, they’re simple. DON’T DATE AT UCLA!!! Date older men or
younger women. Get the nerve to talk to that person in your section
or the one from last quarter’s lab. Don’t limit yourself to one
side of campus.
Forget all the Latino bullcrap and feel free to date out; just
don’t blame me when your parents yell at you. And don’t go out with
guys who take you to the movies with their parents.
Happy dating, my fellow Bruins.