The majority of undergraduate students say they are single and about one-third report they are in an exclusive relationship, according to a recent Herald poll.
The poll found that 72.3 percent of first-years are single and 21.7 percent are in exclusive relationships, compared to the rest of the student body, of which 54.9 percent is single and 37.7 percent is in exclusive relationships.
Students generally said they were not surprised that the numbers reveal differences between freshmen and older students on campus.
It is natural that people enter into relationships over time, said Kristina Harding '11.
"I'm a senior and I've been noticing recently a lot of the people I'm living with are coupled up," said Sofia Pellon '10.
This trend is affected by the idea that "freshman year there is this whole ‘I don't want to be tied down' thing," said Gabe Schwartz '13, finance director of Queer Alliance and co-director of the Queer Political Action Committee.
"Most people like to think of their four years at Brown as an experiment to explore, but I feel like people get into relationships because they have this need for companionship," said Cherilyn Tran '11.
But though Brown upperclassmen are more likely to find a steady partner than freshmen, "the committed relationships are few and far between," said Michele Baer '10.
The campus appears divided — "there are two groups: one hooks up and the others are in serious relationships," said David Chanin '12.
Baer agreed. "Either I've seen people in non-committal non-exclusive friends-with-benefits types of situations, or couples that are really in it for the long term," she said.
Students also mentioned the lack of a dating culture on campus. "Sometimes when I tell my friends I'm going on a date, they say I'm the only one who does that," Pellon said.
Yet students have various definitions of dating. "I see a lot of relationships where people don't put a name on it, people don't seem to do a boyfriend-girlfriend thing," Kelly Eng '11. "I think people are really uncomfortable with labels generally."
A recent study at Michigan State University and Wayne State University found that 36 percent of students asked considered themselves in a "friends with benefits" relationship, a statistic the majority of students said also applied to Brown.
Referring to these casual sexual relationships, "especially for freshman, there is a big push for being sex-repressed for a long time and then having that lifted," Schwartz said.
But the Herald poll found that only 3.4 percent of surveyed students said they were in non-exclusive relationships.
Students, including both Eng and Tran, said this number was significantly lower than they would have predicted.
In comparison with the number of students in exclusive relationships, "I would have assumed that more people were dating more than just being with one specific person," Harding said.
Often, "saying you are in an open relationship has connotations, just on a societal level, as being more promiscuous and lacking the ability to commit," Schwartz said.
Ultimately, though students have different ways of classifying it, "people get into relationships one way or another," Pellon said.
The Herald poll was conducted on March 22 and 23 and has a 3.5 percent margin of error with 95 percent confidence. A total of 714 Brown undergraduates completed the poll, which The Herald administered as a written questionnaire to students in the lobby of J. Walter Wilson during the day and in the Sciences Library at night. For the sample of just freshmen, the margin of error is 6.8 percent. For the sample of non-freshmen, the margin of error is 4.0 percent.
