As I walked through campus with my father last year, he began to notice something that struck him as odd.
My dad went to college during the Swingin”70s, in the whirlwind of the free love movement. But crossing Bruin Walk almost forty years later, he noticed a striking absence of couples.
UCLA, where is the love?
According to Benjamin Karney, a professor of social psychology who studies intimate relationships, a college campus constitutes a pre-selected group of people that are likely to be compatible with one another in age and educational attainment.
In other words, if you walk into a party in the North Village, you are entering a breeding ground for relationships.
That fact makes it more likely that you meet somebody with whom you “click,” go through the appropriate motions and engage in a bona fide relationship.
Looking around Bruin Plaza these days, however, the proliferation of couples one might expect from a young, attractive campus is strangely missing.
Take as proof the abundance of UCLA students that are on the free dating website OkCupid. A simple search with the keyword “UCLA” turns up page after page of mingling singles that have created profiles.
Apparently, then, at least some students have seen an allure in online dating.
In fact, last year a website called DateMySchool.com launched at over 200 campuses, including UCLA. A day after launch, about 150 UCLA students had created profiles.
But if Karney is right, and he assured me that he is, college students should have no need for online dating websites. Such websites, he said, are intended to alleviate the scarcity of access to eligible mates ““ an issue that should not exist on a college campus.
Usually, in the 600-some words that get printed next to my face every week, I like to offer a solution to some sort of problem.
Here, the nature of the problem is not so clear. If UCLA is just a massive, 27,000-person dating game, why are some students turning online for potential partners?
One possible reason could be that students are just too busy to be out looking for dates. Being a student is a 7-day-a-week job, where any time spent on the prowl is time sacrificed from studying. However, one would think the prospect of love everlasting would be enough to temporarily draw students away from their books.
A more subtle problem is an issue that is ubiquitous in offline dating. Imagine walking through a supermarket where all the prices are hidden from you.
Maybe you want to buy bananas and maybe Dole wants to sell you bananas, but in the absence of a stated price neither market signal reaches the other party.
The dating game at UCLA has a similar problem. When you walk by a potential mate, there is no visible information for you to determine if he or she is interested in a relationship. The “price” of a relationship is hidden.
While Facebook allows us to post a relationship status, the word “single” is a poor substitute for “hey, why don’t you ask me out?”
Online dating is a solution to this problem for both students and the general population.
That said, the stigma against online dating is such that most college students will abstain until they absolutely have to ”“ namely, in the social wasteland of the post-college world.
In the meanwhile, we can each take a step to make UCLA a more amorous place simply by being more open and outgoing. Sure, it may be hard work, but the rewards are sufficiently high.
So that girl working at Kerckhoff Coffeehouse who you think is cute? Ask her out. That guy in your math class who you’ve been eyeing? See if he wants to study. In a campus rife with young singles, that next step is often worth taking.
Email Arom at darom@media.ucla.edu or tweet him @Eitan_Arom. Send general comments to opinion@media.ucla.edu or tweet us @DBOpinion.