This year, the Scholarly Antics Office (SAO) announced that in response to disappointing statistics on the number of couples Date Knight produces, the event would be slightly modified this year. Specifically: it has been designed to place students in as much danger as possible, such that adrenaline and sheer terror might bond the new couples. The choice was inspired partly by popular TV shows “The Bachelor” and “Naked and Afraid,” wherein pairs are often placed in high-adrenaline scenarios to encourage bonding, and also by a general interest in “pushing the envelope” on Carleton’s “rigorous” campus culture.

“We’re curious to know: just how much stress can students take?,” said one anonymous SAO staff member. “They’re already familiar with finals-week stress, 1A stress, and finding-screwdates-for-all-their-friends stress, but have they ever walked on a plank 1,000 feet above an active fire?”

The heart-pumping Date Night schedule is as follows:

• Locking couples into a cage full of hungry hyenas, lions, or bears, as preferred
• Blindfolding couples, then transporting them to the midpoint of Mt. Everest; leaving them there with only a single blanket and one thermos of broth
• Launching couples out of a literal cannon, to land somewhere in Lake Superior as it slowly turns to ice
• Placing couples in a windowless, harshly-lit study room directly across a table from Greta Thunberg, who will viciously interrogate them regarding the sustainability of every element of their lifestyle
• Arranging for students’ most prized possessions to be covertly stolen at some point in the night, and then inconspicuously handed off to their date, so that said date can “find” them and save the day, encouraging debt-based love
• For straight couples: Hiring Ruth Bader-Ginsberg to strap the man into a lie detector machine, then demanding he recount every instance in his life when he has made a woman cry, while his date looks on
• Surprise sky-diving, in which couples are flown 20,000 feet into the air and then gently nudged out of the aircraft
• “Hell” yoga, which is like hot yoga except the room’s temperature starts at 100°F and is incrementally increased until it reaches 500°F, a temperature no human can withstand

“I almost died. Oh my god. I have to go call my Mom,” reported one happy student after the night’s events.

One smitten couple reported: “I got the feeling that this wasn’t going to work when she grabbed me by the ankle and flung me directly into the lion’s open mouth.”