Early in the evening on October 31st, hundreds of Harvard students got an email with their “match.” More than a month prior, each of them filled out a survey with a variety of very odd questions: Would you be okay with your partner making more money than you? How dominant or submissive would you say you are? Are there any races/ethnicities that you would prefer not to be matched with?
This idea is not a new one. Started in 2017, the Stanford Marriage Pact combines computer science, psychology, statistics, and pseudoscience to match undergraduates through a proprietary system designed to analyze answers, generate compatibility scores, and help the user “lock down a life partner.” Though it started as a school project, the creators have run the survey every year on different college campuses, including Yale, Tufts, Northwestern, and Duke. The Stanford Marriage Pact claims to have made almost 81,000 matches across the 62 campuses it has reached and also claims to be responsible for at least one wedding. However, inexplicably missing from its list of target colleges is Harvard.
The Harvard Marriage Pact, masquerading as a branch of the Stanford Marriage Pact, collected thousands of data points linked to every person filling out the survey, then seemed to simply disappear into thin air. After the Harvard Marriage Pact poster hit nearly every lamppost on campus, hundreds of unsuspecting undergraduates completed their survey. Then their website was taken down, no emails were responded to, and the Stanford Marriage Pact asserted to inquiring Harvard students that they were not remotely affiliated with the Harvard group.
“No bitch, we’re not a scam,” read the email students received from the Harvard Marriage Pact. “After the stupid Stanford Marriage Pact threatened to sue us for allegedly ‘impersonating them,’ we decided to go incognito while designing our super elite algorithm to match everyone who signed up.” The Stanford Marriage Pact did not respond to a request for comment on this claim.
The Harvard Marriage Pact collected thousands of data points linked to every person filling out the survey, then seemed to simply disappear into thin air.
The students behind the Harvard Marriage Pact—two MIT students—now have a repository of Harvard students’ data. Questions from their survey included: How gay is the student body at Harvard? What do our sex lives look like—how kinky would we say we are? Really, how many people are conscious enough of their biases to tell a stranger that they’d prefer not to be matched with someone of a different race? Do we mind if our partners make more money than us? There were also some odd psychological questions—Would you run a red light if there was nobody around? Do you think you’re smarter than the average Harvard student?
Someone out there has a gold mine of Harvard students’ information and, perhaps more importantly, the students handed it over without a second thought. In a world where the data and information industry in America is worth more than $40 billion yearly, does it really matter anymore who has access to data? This question has been at the forefront of many people’s minds ever since society became enthralled by social media and all platforms alike. Companies like Snap, Meta, and Twitter make billions by selling data to corporations such as advertisers, data analytics groups, and consulting groups.
Newer technology like 23andMe presents an even more convoluted question: millions around the world have, willingly and of their own accord, handed over their entire genome to a private company. The vast majority of them never read the privacy policy—in fact, research suggests only 9% of Americans have ever read a privacy policy. In exchange for seeing pretty maps colored in where my DNA says they’re from, their literal genetic code can be sold to other companies (though not on an “individual level,” according to their privacy policy). Is this really so much different from what the Marriage Pact did? Perhaps more importantly, does it even matter? Could 23andMe’s customers be harmed from the sale of their information?
After their aforementioned rebranding, the Harvard Marriage Pact relaunched as exexex.io—a new dating website. The goal of exexex.io is to match the user with their “ex’s ex’s exes”—figuring they’d be pretty compatible in an “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” type of way. After filling out their “tell be about yourself you little freak” form—which asks for only the user’s phone number, instagram handle, name, and a short bio—the user (in theory) can be matched with others after providing more information. Interestingly, their new website does not have a publicly accessible privacy policy posted on the main page of their website. Effectively, this means any information handed over to them is subject to whatever they would like to do with it.
Some look at the Harvard Marriage Pact as a fun experiment. One person went on a date with their match, another received a direct message from theirs and simply ignored it, another was matched with his current boyfriend, and another never came into contact with their match.
Everyone has their own morality when it comes to the privacy of their data. Some have no worries about where and how their data is used, while others are mortified any time a website asks for their real name. Two MIT students—and maybe more—now have a plethora of data on Harvard students, with little to no legal restrictions on what they can do with it. We can only hope it doesn’t end up being abused.
After all, once you put something on the internet, it never goes away.
The Independent reached out to the MIT students who run the Harvard Marriage Pact with the goal of accessing the privacy policy on the original website, which would lend insight into exactly what the group claimed they had the right to do with the data. However, the student did not provide a comment.
Daniel Ennis ’25 (djennis@college.harvard.edu) is also one of the suckers that got bamboozled by a couple of MIT geeks.
Following the publication of this article, the team from the Stanford Marriage Pact requested this comment be included:
They shamelessly ripped off the Marriage Pact and left students in the dark about their data—we would have been worried too. Doing the right thing involves transparency and trust. In real Marriage Pacts, we do two things: we make sure everyone knows what’s happening, and we give people complete control over their data—they can delete it at any time.
Campus-wide Marriage Pacts are incredibly fun. When the Harvard Marriage Pact happens for real this year, you’ll know.