In a ‘ring by spring’ world, how are all the single students supposed to find love on campus?
The Lipscomb College of Computing and Technology designed a matching service that helps students find a date just in time for Valentine’s Day.
Lipscomb’s chapter of the Association of Computer Machinery (ACM) hosts Bison Match every year to raise money for their events and to help students work on creating algorithms.
The quiz starts with basic information and lets students upload a picture and a short bio. It then moves into more creative questions, such as an ideal date and how students would describe themselves using social media apps.
ACM President and senior computer science major Andie Goode shared how the matching system works.
“It’s really simple, we are not psychologists,” Goode said. “It’s ten questions and the matching is based on if you have the same answer for a question, then that’s your percentage. It’s kind of made to be a fun, goofy Valentine’s thing.”
Despite having a matching percentage, it’s not guaranteed that students’ matches will see them. A student could be matched with someone who has a larger number of matches with a higher percentage, and the results only show the top five.
“It’s kind of nice, because if you take the quiz and you don’t see anything that looks good, somebody else could still approach you that you didn’t get matched with,” Goode said. “It’s nice to have that extra [boost to] get your name out there.”
Due to the fact that Lipscomb has more female students Goode said the number of students that participated were one-third male, two-thirds female, and a small portion of undefined students.
Goode also said that the ACM students who created Bison Match tried to make the service as inclusive as possible by pitching a sexual preference option as a part of the quiz. However, they were urged to make the question more broad.
“We are hoping through the years to slowly make it more inclusive, we just had some push-back from faculty, and students and just the Lipscomb image,” Goode said. “Since we couldn’t add the feature entirely as we wanted, to make it more inclusive, we added a little bit just to make it not as male or female.”
Bison Match has been running for several years, and Goode said that though the quiz is supposed to be just for fun, there have been success stories from couples. Goode considers her relationship as one of those Bison Match success stories.
“My boyfriend was one of my matches my freshmen year,” she said. “We didn’t start dating because of Bison Match, but we were friends. I like to think that I’m a success story of Bison Match.”
To promote the quiz, ACM decided to give away a $10 Starbucks gift card to the person with the funniest bio. Junior Kayley Rodriguez won the gift card for her bio, “I back into parking spaces for attention.”
Bison Match doesn’t guarantee a love connection, but the quiz adds something unique to the student life experience and allows students to meet new people.
“Valentine’s is a fun holiday, but it’s also super cheesy,” Goode said. “We didn’t want to take ourselves so seriously because obviously it’s not a real matching service, it’s goofy and that’s what it’s meant to be. We just thought it would be a fun way for people on campus to have a fun time.”
Photo courtesy of Bison Match