Involved parties discuss the success and scope of small-scale dating services on college campuses
By NOAH HARRIS — features@theaggie.org
At UC Davis, there is a relatively unknown and unconventional method for students to find love: Datamatch, a website initially started at Harvard University in 1994. Unlike Hinge or Tinder, which are mobile apps, Datamatch is a dating website unaffiliated with UC Davis where students can sign up, answer survey questions and be matched with other UC Davis students.
This year, 331 students, around 1.1% of UC Davis’ undergraduate population, used the website. Students log in using their university email, ensuring that only fellow students are permitted to use the website. Each year on Valentine’s Day, 10 potential matches will be presented to users, after which they can decide to “like” as many of them as they want. If both people “like” each other, they will be matched and have the chance to fall in love or, at the very least, have an awkward interaction via the site’s direct messaging feature.
Since its inception in 1994, the site has expanded to include 47 universities. This year, over 16,500 people signed up in total across the nation. In the recent past, Datamatch has experienced privacy issues, such as when a Harvard student released the Rice Purity Scores of Datamatch users and when UC Los Angeles students accessed the profiles of over 16,000 students.
While Datamatch has existed for three decades, it was introduced to UC Davis in 2021 from Nina Steinkemper, a 2022 UC Davis alum with Bachelor of Arts degrees in design and communications.
Steinkemper had friends that attended East Coast schools and who commented on their experiences with university-specific dating platforms.
“I was like, this sounds so cool,” Steinkemper said. “But I was also thinking, maybe UC Davis is just too big and it’s not gonna happen.”
Steinkemper submitted a request to Datamatch to add UC Davis, which was approved.
“I was reading more into this, and I slowly just started to realize that I’m the one who has to do all the work,” Steinkemper said.
After creating survey questions, Datamatch already had a system in place to gather student emails, which left most of the work in advertising.
“Basically, what they do is they write a code so they can get every single email from their student directory and they encourage every single university to do that,” Steinkemper said. “Just because you literally get your hands on thousands of emails.”
Steinkemper, with help from a Harvard student, attempted to find an easy way to email en masse.
“It wasn’t possible because our university is a public university, so the database is just way more protected,” Steinkemper said. “But then again, our university still has a directory where you can find [any] student. I have access to all this information, but now I’m realizing I’m gonna have to copy and paste. I did this for like three months while I watched lectures [and] watched TV.”
There were roadblocks that arose for Steinkemper with emailing thousands in the school directory, including only being able to use an email account affiliated with UC Davis.
“I was using just a generic Gmail [account],” Steinkemper said. “A lot of things would land in spam. So I think ultimately, it was really hard to not get the scammer vibe [from me]. That year, we had 790 students sign up.”
Steinkemper described different methods she used at the beginning of the Datamatch process.
“I went to this one thing that was just such a mistake,” Steinkemper said. “I went to a discussion [on Zoom] and I put the survey [in the Zoom chat] so people could do it immediately. After, I saw I got kicked out of the class. Then, I [got] an email from UC Davis administration saying that I have one strike on my admission. If I do it one more time, I’m gonna get kicked out of UC Davis.”
Through Steinkemper’s efforts, which included making a UC Davis Datamatch Instagram page, the following year, which was the second of the site’s existence, they were able to reach 1,504 student users, nearly four percent of the UC Davis undergraduate population. However, a few months later, Steinkemper graduated.
“I didn’t have anyone to pass it down to,” Steinkemper said. “I assumed that it just went away.”
The Instagram account became inactive and students no longer received emails from the Datamatch account. However, the entity itself stayed alive.
This year, one individual responsible for Datamatch’s advertising, who wishes to remain anonymous, explained their reasons for promoting Datamatch.
“I want to help out my fellow Aggies [and] some friends of mine,” the anonymous source said. “There’s all sorts of clubs at UC Davis, but it can be kind of hard for people to try to connect with somebody, and I’m not talking about a hookup or a one-night thing.”
Unlike Steinkemper, the anonymous source did not contact Datamatch or create the survey.
“I had no affiliation, I had no access,” the anonymous source said. “All I did was help with just advertising. I was trying to put the word out on YikYak.”
Chris Whites, a fourth-year art history major, joined Datamatch in 2024.
“I heard about Datamatch from a flyer on campus that had a QR code on it,” Whites said via email. “I signed up because I thought that it would be a fun way to meet new friends. I filled out the survey and got a few matches with some people but I never actually met up with anyone.”
However, the results of 2024’s Datamatch was not as successful as what was hoped for, according to the anonymous source.
“Unfortunately, the payoff wasn’t quite what I was hoping,” the anonymous source said. “It didn’t work. One of my friends was turned off by all the advertising. So they weren’t even interested and then other people said they didn’t like their matches. Only 331 people signed up to do this. There’s not going to be a lot [of options].”
While the future of Datamatch at UC Davis is unclear, there is a path for university-specific dating sites, with 38% of Harvard students using Datamatch and 25% of Cornell University’s student body using a site called Perfect Match.
The anonymous source was skeptical about the future of Datamatch, citing the lack of awareness and limited timeframe of the site.
“It’s not really that well known,” the anonymous source said. “The problem is, while I think it’s a really cool service, it’s only open one week of the year for Valentine’s Day, which is problematic.”
In the future, Datamatch could end up being a popular form of online dating at UC Davis. However, while Datamatch holds a presence on other university campuses, the percentage of users at UC Davis have been decreasing over the last few years. Whatever happens, Datamatch and similar small-scale dating services prove an interesting method of finding love in college.
Written by: Noah Harris — features@theaggie.org
