Notes from the Desk Putting a ring on it, Middlebury style

Author: Tess Russell

"50 percent of Middlebury graduates marry each other." If I had a nickel for every time I've heard someone work this dubious statistic into a lunch conversation at Atwater … Well, let's just say I'd be making much more frequent use of the CoinStar at Hannaford. At this point, the "fact" about alumni marriages is so over-cited that you might as well tell me Pluto's not a planet, because I'd respond pretty much the same way - been there, done that, declined to join the Facebook group about it, wonder why exactly I'm supposed to care.

First of all, there's the sheer ridiculousness of the number itself. I have always been completely confident in my assumption that the actual percentage doesn't even come close to approaching the 5-0 mark, but for posterity's sake, I thought it might behoove me to do a little research on the subject. And so, to set the record straight: an institutional study, conducted in the 1990s and referenced on the College's Web site, did find that approximately 17 percent of alumni since 1915 had married among themselves.

Don't get me wrong, 17 percent is a lot - in fact, it may well be a higher figure than can be found at any other institute for higher education in America, though no such comparison has been undertaken - but it certainly isn't 50. The New York Times actually chronicled the apocryphal Middlebury phenomenon in a 1992 article titled "Marriage Talk as an Intramural Sport," which claimed that it was several generations of College administrators (and not vividly imaginative students, as might be expected) that perpetrated all the misinformation.

The Times story noted that some alumni remember hearing former College presidents say things like "Look to your left, look to your right: Two out of three of you will marry a Middlebury graduate" during their freshman orientations. (President Emeritus John M. McCardell, Jr. was apparently the first to temper the rhetoric with reality, opting instead for the noncommittal "One of the things you may do [at Middlebury] is fall in love.") At some point, a College dean even admonished one president to tone down the avowal of Middlebury marriages in his address, because the dean felt it was having a "shocking" effect on the audience's "impressionable 18-year-olds."

I'm inclined to agree with him. Middlebury students are, on the whole, a busy and highly motivated group who could probably do without the added pressure of finding life partners before they turn 22. (Or worse, before they turn 19 - another particularly egregious rumor involves an ungodly number of students meeting their future spouses on Middlebury Outdoor Orientation trips.) Undoubtedly, many people who fall into the touted 17 percent were mere acquaintances in college who reconnected through mutual friends after Middlebury. All the statistic really reflects, then, is an alumni network that is more close-knit than most and (perhaps) the fact that the College went co-ed so early, back in 1883.

Ultimately, neither the mythology nor the data surrounding Middlebury marriages hold much significance for us as individuals - in other words, just because one in six (thanks, mathletes) graduates are married to other graduates doesn't mean you're any more likely to spend the rest of your life with that kid you've drunkenly stumbled home with from Two Bros the last few Thursdays. And, not to single out my own gender, but when girls tell me - even half-jokingly - that they're here to get their MRS degree, it kind of makes me want to throw up.

Please don't mistake my skepticism for bitterness. I know some lovely couples here and nothing would make me happier than seeing them settle down and maybe have children together and maybe even send those children to school here someday. So, if you do decide to put a ring on it, Middlebury style, don't forget to include me in the wedding festivities. I'll be the one at the bar, "buying" SoCo lime shots for - and flirting inappropriately with - your new younger brother-in-law. ("Really, a sophomore in college? You look a lot older.")

For what it's worth, the institutional research also showed that those Middlebury students who do marry each other truly mate, like seahorses or prairie voles, for life: only 12 percent of Middlebury "intramarriages" end in divorce, as compared to a national average of around 40 percent.

Now there's a statistic that I can get behind.