Fall In Love for Class Credit?

As a Wesleyan Alumni, I’ve heard of some pretty weird courses; a class where you watch porn; a student forum just about illegal drugs; and, of course, the ever bizarre experimental music classes. However, Ball State University's Cardinal Chemistry, a class where students date each other to see if they’ll fall in love, is the weirdest course I've heard of yet.

Yes, Ball State University's leadership and communication class Cardinal Chemistry is conducting a project that aims to see if the class can make two people fall in love — apparently thoroughly preparing them for a future career of working on The Bachelor. The Cardinal Chemistry students broke up into teams; the romance team, the storytelling team, the psycho-analytic team and the promotional team. These teams, according to The Ball State Daily, helped plan “almost every aspect of the couple’s relationships.” First, the class hosted a mixer so that the three male students in the class who volunteered to be subjects in the study could meet a potential partner. The female students who attended the mixer had to fill out personality and "love language" surveys so that the class’ psycho-analytic team could help find the best match.

After three couples were formed, the couples went on three dates; first to Panera Bread (someone on the romance team needs to be fired), then a group date to a pumpkin patch, and finally an intimate night where the men cooked dinner for their dates. Though the project isn’t over, one couple already broke up, citing that they got along better as friends than lovers.

I’m not sure how any of these relationships are expected to flourish when every aspect of the relationship is “analyzed” and planned by the class, making circumstances difficult for intimacy and genuine connection. It also seems counterproductive that the class is using their very own classmates as subjects; how can they be impartial when they all have personal connections? More importantly, who thought that this would be a good idea?

I predict that either the other two couples will break up, or if one lasts, they will break up when the experiment stops, because they weren’t really able to form a real bond in the first place. I'll take my Wesleyan porn class over this eye-roll worthy experiment any day.

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