Mixing Business School and Pleasure

They thought they had finally figured out the quick and easy answer to long nights spent flirting at the Picadilly Filly. But the only thing two second-year Business School students who started the Wellesley-HBS Date Match have learned is how not to run a dating service.

The Date Match, first announced last Monday in a full-page advertisement in The Harbus News and on flyers distributed around the Wellesley campus, has elicited disgust rather than delight from women at both campuses.

For $10 and a self-addressed stamped envelope, Butler and Laffey promised to match interested participants from each school with five students from the opposite campus, basing their choices on information gleaned from a questionnaire.

The Date Match was intended, Butler says, "To be a lot of fun and to give guys a way to meet other people." He cited the large male-female ratio at the Business School as primary justification for his brainchild.

"There are a lot of guys and women who prefer not to date someone from HBS," says Butler. "It is a very closed, small environment and you know everyone here. It's like dating someone you work with," he adds.

Butler says he followed the lead of his undergraduate alma mater, the University of Indiana, which sponsors a drawing from 15,000 to 20,000 participants. And then there has been a long-standing, if informal, link between Wellesley women and the B-School men.

"There's a lot of good natured kidding that goes on between men and women at HBS," Butler explains. "You joke about things at school, and those were the things we put in the ad and on the flyers to show we were joking around."

But Wellesley and B-School women certainly weren't laughing.

Neither are Butler and Laffey, who because of unfortunate phrases on their ads, including "Date a man with a trust fund and a BMW" and "Have a date without the girl going through EMV analysis," have learned a hard lesson about advertising.

"A date match in general can be a lot of fun," says Anne E. Feeser, editor-in-chief of The Wellesley News, "I don't understand why people would be involved with [sthis one]. If that's what they're loking for in women, that's a sad comment."

The ad "perpetuates the stereotype that all Wellesley women want to do is get married and have babies," said Mary A. Flannery, treasurer of the Women Students Association at the B-School and a Wellesley graduate.

Elizabeth L. Stone, a Wellesley student, said of the offensive words, "This is exactly the kind of thing that most women at Wellesley spend their four years fighting. Not only is it sexist, it's the general kind of cut that's often made against our college."

So why Wellesley?

Originally Butler and Laffey had envisioned organizaing a huge date match system for the entire University, including the College, graduate and professional schools. But, the traditional fascination between Wellesley and HBS was a safer bet.

According to Wellesley Business Club President Deborah M. Kim, a number of Wellesley women go to the Business School to socialize. "Wellesley women are pretty discriminating," she added. "They like Harvard Business and Harvard Law better than any other schools around."

Butler offers the male's point of view, "Most other schools around here are coed, and Wellesley is well-known and a good school."

"They are a big part of our social life," says Deborah Y. Kim, president of ZA, a Wellesley literary society which also regularly sponsors social events.

She adds that B-School men are not the club's only avenue of social activity.

The "demeaning" ad aside, Flannery says she has "no problem with the dating link between HBS and Wellesley."

"Both men and women get bored with studying cases and talking about business," she says. "It's great to talk to people who aren't from here."

She adds that meeting people from outside the B-School is a lot easier for men than for women. "There's a whole population of women (at Wellesley) who are sitting there and are interested in having men to meet," she says.

Ginger L. Howard, president of the Wellesley Students Association agrees, "HBS men need the opportunity to invite women from any place in the area." She adds that women comprise only about a quarter of the B-School's student body and that many B-Schoolers are already either married or engaged.

HBS women see Wellesley women as competition and "bitch about" inviting Wellesley women to parties and other events, Butler says, so he wasn't surprised by their reaction.

But the only reason he could find for the Date Match's failure on the Wellesley side was skepticism. "It's not a common way to meet people here," he says. "Maybe we're just a little before out time...they laughed at Christopher Columbus!"