CampusMatch

Once upon a time, in the spring of 2002, two students at Wesleyan University, a small liberal arts school nestled amongst the rolling hills, long tidal rivers, and low-income housing projects of Middletown, Connecticut, stumbled across an ancient secret: somewhere, locked away in an ivory tower, lived a comely, vegan, folk music–loving, cello-playing princess, imprisoned for all eternity. Of the two gallant youths, one already had a girlfriend and dismissed the girl as naught but a myth, a legend, a tale muttered into the cups of old, hoary-bearded seniors, but the other vowed that he would find this maiden, free her, woo her, and win her hand, thus reinforcing the patriarchal and phallogocentric gender binary. So, the lad took up his golden lute, and with it and his silver tongue he convinced his friend to join his quest. Together, with the aid of several stout comrades, they created WesMatch.com, so that this knight-errant could search a database for his true love, the one person he knew would match all of his criteria, rather than have to deal with the myriad vagaries of actually leaving his room or talking to people.

While his folksy vegan maiden never did fill out the website's questionnaire, almost everyone else at the school did, and within two days the majority had joined up, so the enterprise was deemed at least a partial success. By popular demand, the creators began to spread the website to other schools, ultimately relaunching as CampusMatch.com, a global enterprise through which students everywhere can seek out friends and true loves, contact them, and, with any luck, live happily ever after.

The CampusMatch Network

Today, between 80% and 95% of the undergraduate student body has signed up for the site at most member schools. CampusMatch sites have been featured in the New York Times, Time Magazine, the Boston Globe, U.S. News & World Report, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and numerous regional and school papers, as well as on CNBC and CNN Headline News. And, of course, in ELLEgirl Magazine.

Want to join CampusMatch? Register now.