Every Carleton student has been knowingly told “Carls marry Carls” at one point or another, often delivered with a well-meaning but ultimately creepy smile. Upperclassmen say it, tour guides say it, random alumni at sporting events say it, even professors say it. However, on Oct. 15, the sinister cause of this phenomenon was revealed when a whistle-blower within the administration leaked classified documents showing the school’s role in manipulating students into marriages as a long-term fundraising strategy.
“With the marriage pact, the farm ‘friendship’ fest and the experimental love potion that makes the water taste weird, I was feeling really conflicted about my part in the process,” the whistle-blower said in an anonymous interview with the Carletonian. “Then, one day, while I was replacing the notes in the fortune cookies at LDC with targeted romantic suggestions, which I had come up with by spying on students and taking notes of their insecurities, I decided I had to do something.”
The leaked cache of documents revealed that Carleton has been social engineering relationships between students since the school’s founding in the 1800s. In fact, surviving records prove that plans to orchestrate student marriage were the only reason Carleton originally accepted female students, challenging the long-asserted progressive legacy that you read about in the brochures.
Documents show that Carleton’s founders feared that alumni would not donate money to the school because their “tricksy conniving wives could never understand the gentlemanly value of education,” and would, therefore, persuade their husbands not to donate using “the female’s biological predisposition for manipulation and deception.” To address this problem, the founders decided they “must accept the necessary evil of providing women an education.”
This funding structure proved successful and was expanded over time. An internally conducted survey from the 80s further legitimized this tactic by showing that “dual-Carleton households accounted for over 70% of the school’s donor base. This is presumably due to shared positive memories of the school or perhaps desperate attempts by couples to hold onto the good parts of their relationship after realizing that the only thing they really have in common is that they both went to Carleton.” Additionally, 75% of children of alumni couples were applying to Carleton, and the school was able to sell a lot of child-sized merch.
In 2024, Carleton’s systematic promotion of relationships between students still directs every decision made at the school. According to the whistle-blower, course selection, housing placement and even admissions are all calculated with the purpose of pairing up romantically compatible (and economically advantageous) couples. Is there someone cute you see while filling up your water bottle at a certain time and place every night? Carleton planned that. Was someone with your exact hobbies in your roommate’s New Student Week group? Carleton planned that. There has been no end to the deception.
Even the long-term tradition of Friday flowers originated with the express purpose of manipulating students into long-term relationships, apparently an open secret amongst Northfield florists.
“Of course, we knew it was going on,” an anonymous local florist admitted. “When a man who is also a dean of students in sunglasses and a dark coat picks up 20 flowers every week and signs each note with the name of a different student, you put two and two together. Criticize me all you want, but money is money, and the flower market is cutthroat in a town like this.”
In a startling departure from her usual demeanor, one unnamed school president was secretly recorded admitting her involvement in and frightening enjoyment of the manipulation.
“I know it all started as a funding initiative, but at this point, it’s really more about the power,” the anonymous college president said. “It’s intoxicating. I, the world’s greatest puppeteer, can control these young lives with just the pull of a string. The best part is, they’ll never know. They’ll spend their whole lives never seeing past the specter of free will. To truly have power is to control without recognition.”
This announcement has sparked chaos across campus as couples question how much of their relationship is contrived by the school administration. To accommodate for the influx of breakups, the rec center gym will be open 24/7, and the Weitz cinema will be playing Mamma Mia! on a loop for the next few weeks. Students have protested this across campus, describing it as “blatant stereotyping”, but every seat in the Weitz was still occupied at 3 a.m. last night.