Bronco couples headed to the Mission Church?
By Emily Entress
If you are a Santa Clara Bronco, then you have heard that statistic. It's actually more of a rumor than a statistic, and yet almost every student on campus knows it: that 60 percent of Santa Clara graduates marry other Santa Clara alumni.
The actual numbers are in, and before you get desperate searching for your soul mate, it turns out the statistic is highly unrealistic.
Records show that there are 6,428 graduate and undergraduate alumni married to other alumni, which means there are 3,214 alumni couples in total, according to Mike Wallace, the director of the Santa Clara Fund in the University Relations Office.
Although the office could not provide a percentage of how many alumni that number represents, if you take into account the fact that approximately 1,500 undergraduates and graduate students become alumni each year, the percentage would still not amount to a number anywhere near 60 percent.
According to Ginny Pauksta, the administrative coordinator for the Mission Church, the current average is that 3.5 out of ten weddings at the Mission Church have been between two Santa Clara alumni. Although weddings in the Mission Church are restricted to Santa Clara students, faculty, staff and graduates, even this number hints at a lower percentage that 60 percent.
Even if the legendary statistic is not true, the fact that it has been so widely accepted for so many years shows how close the Santa Clara community is, and how common it is for Broncos to find their spouses on campus.
"A lot of people in my immediate circle of friends ended up marrying other Santa Clara students," said Dr. Steve Chiesa, a Civil Engineering professor who graduated from Santa Clara in 1975. "It's a close knit campus and community, so it's only natural that students would make those kinds of bonds here."
In fact, he met his wife during his sophomore year when she and her roommate came to his dorm selling cookies as part of a fundraiser.
"We made friends at first; she helped me out with my humanities classes and I helped her out with her math and some of her more technical subjects, so things grew from there," he commented.
It seems to be a common theme that romantic relationships at Santa Clara begin with a friendship. According to Eric Johnson, a current senior whose parents graduated from Santa Clara in 1981, his parents had been friends throughout college and actually ended up living together with a group in an off-campus house their senior year.
"She always says how crazy and messy the boys were, and that at one time she tried to rally the girls living in the house to move out and leave the boys behind," said Johnson.
Many students on campus have parents that are Santa Clara alumni, and have shared their experiences about the dating scene and how it has changed from only 20 or 30 years ago. For example, when senior Morgan Doherty's parents were Santa Clara students in the late 1970's, there was an on-campus bar where dorms held mixers to encourage students to meet one another.
"My parents met through mutual friends while they were attending a mixer between dorms held at ‘Club 66,' an on-campus bar in the basement of McLaughlin," said Doherty.
Even though the 60 percent statistic proved to be unrealistic, the actual numbers compare pretty well to other universities. At Miami University of Ohio, for example, they have coined the term "Miami Merger" to refer to two students who attended Miami and ended up getting married. On their alumni site, they quote that there are 26,580 Miami alumni married to another alum, creating 13,290 mergers. This represents approximately 14 percent of the total living alumni population.
So take a deep breath; if you haven't found your soul mate yet there is still time! Like the old saying goes, there are more fish in the sea, and larger seas than Santa Clara.
Are you married to your college sweetheart? How did you meet? How long have you been together? Post your tales of SCU romance below!