![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/files\/2012\/02\/60-percent-illustration-final.jpg\")
<\/a>Illustration by Marty Braun.<\/p><\/div>\n
On campus, \u201c60 percent\u201d launches some of the first conversations among incoming students. It\u2019s an icebreaker for first-year women crowded on a bunk in Smith. Or, during a pre-orientation AESOP trip, the upperclass trip leader shares the fact with her new charges.<\/p>\n
Later on, the statistic might be used to tease a friend after his or her embarrassing encounter, romantic or otherwise, with another Batesie: \u201cHey, it\u2019s 60 percent \u2014 it could happen!\u201d Or, much later, the stat might come up in an awkward conversation, like when someone asks the senior couple who\u2019s been dating since freshman year if they\u2019re going to become \u201cstatistics.\u201d<\/p>\n
And the statistic is perpetuated via many pathways. Besides word of mouth, it\u2019s published in at least one college guide. And the stat has history: A 1978 grad claimed to have heard then-President Thomas Hedley Reynolds announce at Convocation, \u201cLook to your left, look to your right. Sixty percent of you will marry other Bates grads.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sixty percent grabs our attention, plays to our emotions, and tests our imaginations. But can it really be true? Will over half of us really<\/em> marry one another?<\/p>\n Well, no.<\/p>\n The accurate figure is approximately 12.5 percent. Of the 23,356 living alums in the Bates database, 2,914 have a spouse or partner who is also a Bates alum. (If you include alums whose Bates spouse or partner is deceased, the number creeps up a few points.)<\/p>\n Finding this real answer, and exploring the connection between myth and reality, was part of my final project in the seminar \u201cMarriage in America,\u201d taught by Professor of Women and Gender Studies Rebecca Herzig. Besides finding the real Bates marriage statistic, I interviewed various Bates people, including President Elaine Tuttle Hansen, and presented my findings in a video documentary that\u2019s now on Vimeo.<\/a><\/p>\n When they heard the real marriage percentage, Batesies expressed genuine shock. One not-yet-hitched senior female, figuring the pool of spouses was only the<\/p>\n size of Bates, responded in relief. \u201cThank God, I still have time! I won\u2019t die alone with my cat!\u201d<\/p>\n Others went to great lengths trying to convince me that I was wrong. They insisted they heard the figure recited during an official campus tour, while others named a long list of married Bates couples. One girl even tried to drag me to her dorm to show me the statistic printed in a college guidebook.<\/p>\n In fact, I found that colleges of our ilk also tend to have a mythical marriage statistic. At Colby, the myth is 50 percent and the reality 11 percent, while at Carleton it\u2019s 60 and 15 percent, respectively. At Middlebury, the numbers are 60 and 13 percent.<\/p>\n I was also interested in unraveling the meaning attached to both the 13 percent and 60 percent.<\/p>\n The politics of marriage has influenced the very well-being of the College.<\/p>\n One message is within these very pages. Although official Bates alumni records reflect partnerships as well as marriages, Bates Magazine<\/em>\u2019s Vital Statistics section employs the heading \u201cMarriages.\u201d Why not \u201cMarriages and Commitments,\u201d to give same-sex couples an equal opportunity to publicly announce lifetime partnerships? The magazine\u2019s wedding photo section, however, does include non-marriage celebrations.<\/p>\n The politics of marriage has influenced the very well-being of the College. Anecdotally, I found that people who are highly involved in Bates affairs are often married to other Batesies. And when a Bates alum marries a non-Bates alum, a curious historical phenomenon has often come into play: The husband\u2019s college tends to get a greater share of the couple\u2019s philanthropy. (This can also be true at other colleges elsewhere.)<\/p>\n So, how did<\/em> we get to 60 percent?<\/p>\n The people I spoke with alluded to the mesmerizing quality of 60 percent, how it foreshadows our transformation from single undergraduates sitting in Commons to adults married to someone who once possibly grazed next to us at the salad bar. (And lest you think that students don\u2019t ponder marriage: Think again. A classmate who\u2019s a sociology major found that marriage is quite on the minds of Bates students.)<\/p>\n Perhaps 60 percent represents residual social pressure to find a mate. For women of another era, one goal of college was to find a husband, and 60 percent could reflect lingering social demand.<\/p>\n Or, rather than some heteronormative notion of marriage, where men and women express traditional gender roles, maybe 60 percent embodies something else altogether: the lifetime bond shared by all Batesies.<\/p>\n