Seniors Coupled At Last Minute

He loves me. He loves me not. Harvard seniors can stop denuding daisies. The class matchmakers are in the House.

Jeremy L. Lizt '97, Jeffrey D. Krauss '97 and Alber J. Moffitt '97 created the Class of 1997 Last Chance Data-match in order to give the "member[s] of the Class of '97 the opportunity to get together with that special someone (or special someones)," they said.

The Datamatch is an electronic matchmaker which students access via a link from the senior class' Website (hcs.harvard.edu/~class97). Seniors could log on until 5 p.m. (although the deadline was extended to 6:30 p.m. because of a flurry of late responses) last Wednesday.

Interested seniors listed the names of up to 24 classmates with whom they wish there had been "something more" over the last four years.

The Harvard Computer Society computer then sorted seniors' lists and noted overlaps. The computer for warded messages to both parties in cases of mutual interest.

What separates this matchmaker from its human competitors is the confidentiality factor.

A senior whose passion was not reciprocated risks nothing. As Lizt says, " The beauty is that there's no embarrassment. They don't find out you like them unless they want you, too".

Lizt originally threw out the idea of the Datamatch to a group of friends, both male and female, as a half-joke. Since the initial response was over-whelmingly positive, Lizt, Krauss and Moffitt decided to make the idea a reality. The Last Chance Dance provided the necessary venue.

Most of the publicity for this senior service was done by word-of-mouth, but the organizers sent out an e-mail to announce the program on Saturday, May 24 and a reminder message last Tuesday to seniors. Those seniors whose names had been selected, but had not participated themselves, also received a special nudging e-mail.

One self-described "paranoid senior" who received the nudging e-mail said he decided to participate "principally because I wanted to find out who it was who picked me."

The senior, who was too afraid to give his name, continued, "If I hadn't gotten the message saying that I was picked, I wouldn't have done the Data-match."

Another nudged senior, who described herself as "prudent," said: "The bottom line is, I decided not to mail in any names because I decided it was probably a cruel joke and they did it to see if I'd put them on my list and that there was no real interest."

Besides this senior, who was too prudent to give her name, would prefer to "let the chips--not computer chips--fall where they may."

In spite of the hesitance of these two seniors, 224 seniors, or about 14 percent of the class, did participate in the program. The entries resulted in 85 matches, about one-third of the pool. Some participants had more than one match.

The final e-mails to participants either extended congratulations, or held out the hope that "it's possible that many (or all) of the people you requested did not submit entries. So there's still hope."