Op-Ed
Any Person, Any Husband?
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Agree to Disagree
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The ice has slowly melted, and that can only mean a few things: sangria at Collegetown Bagels, Crocs without the fur, and above all, the springtime of young love. Yet those exposing their fleshy behinds to Cupid’s bow in the next few weeks might be disappointed to learn that at Cornell, Spring Fever is not quite so contagious as is commonly thought.
One of the campus’ most pervasive comfort tales is the alleged marriage rate among Cornell grads — sometimes said to be as high as 50 or 60 percent. This statistic has always struck me as awfully high, and with only a few weeks remaining before graduation — and spousal prospects looking as slim as the job search — I decided to don my “Mythbusters” beret, and debunk this conjecture.
As it turns out, the percentage of Cornellians who marry each other is only 10 percent, “a far cry from the … rumors that are often heard,” according to “Dear Uncle Ezra…,” the University’s online question-and-answer service.
“This may be one of the biggest reddest tall tales on campus,” Uncle Ezra acknowledged, “and it is one that has been around for ages.”
While Cornell’s other ubiquitous (and likewise bogus) urban legend — that we suffer from especially high suicide rates — has tangible roots in Ithaca’s gaping gorges, there is no immediate explanation for the marriage myth.
As it turns out, the fable may be older even than the University, which was itself born of a nuptial coup of sorts.
Years before founding this great university, a young Ezra Cornell informed his father in an 1831 letter home that, “I presume you will expect to hear that I have made a wife of Miss Byington but that ant the case and I never intended it should be but I am happy to inform you that I am about to form a matrimonial connection with Miss Mary Ann Wood,” whose Protestant faith caused the Quaker church to expel Ezra from its ranks.
Ezra and Mary Ann Cornell’s forbidden love may well have set a precedent for the next century, when marriage rates among Cornellians supposedly swelled.
“In the old days, it was higher, in the 1940s and the 50s,” said an editor of the alumni magazine, although she confided that, “that’s also anecdotal.”
In the early 1950s, a group called the Student Council Survey Committee sanctioned a study called, “Social Life and Dating at Cornell,” which suggested that Cornell marriages might be moored in the matrimonial aspirations of women students.
“An interesting note here,” the report read, “is that when asked when they would like to be married, one-third of the men said ‘when financially able’ while a similar number of women want to be married immediately after graduation.” Compared to only two out of five men, the survey reported, 55 percent of women thought marriage in college was a “good idea.”
By the 1970s, marriage was still popular among Cornellians, although bridegrooms were no longer fastened into wedlock, but increasingly following their wives down the aisle.
“I turned down 10 jobs,” engineer Keith B. Stobie ’79 told the Sun, choosing instead to accompany his fiancée, Lois M. Watson ’78, to San Francisco, where she had landed a job with Hewlett-Packard.
At the turn of the century, as President Hunter Rawlings imparted some final words of advice to the graduating class, one capped-and-gowned senior, Felix Mendez ’00, surprised his girlfriend, Delcia Rawlins ’00, by dropping to one knee and proposing in front of the 5,000 crowded graduates.
Today, the perception among students that marriage rates are high is widespread and deeply entrenched. When I trick-questioned Blythe Posner ’08 about the statistic, she responded with a degree of aplomb befitting her “scene”-ior status, “Like at least 85 percent.”
In large part, such beliefs are perpetuated by the high number of legacy students at Cornell. Last year, 14 percent of the incoming class were children of alumni, and the number of entering students whose parents were both Cornellians rose from 92 last year to 101 this year, according to Cornell Magazine.
As one who sprung from a both-parts-Cornell zygote myself, it does oftentimes seem like everyone’s parents met, or met someone, in Ithaca. As another double legacy, Zach Gould ’11, said, “My mom always tells me stories about her junior year house on Dryden Ave. It was five Cornell couples, and four of them got married.”
Who, and how many, among us will end up together is of course impossible to predict. For my part, I’ll defer to the wisdom of someone in a Cornell marriage — my mother:
“At this rate, you’re not going to be one!”
Rob Fishman is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. He can be contacted at rbfishman@cornellsun.com. Agree to Disagree appears Tuesdays.
Follow up
Felix and Delcia are still together. Married for 5 years. We have 1 daughter.