How does love manage to fit in between classes and career fairs? In a place where ambition and intellect run high, is there still room for romance? The leaves are falling into place — and for some students, it may be time to fall in love as well.
When Mariah Kennedy Cuomo ’17 visited Brown during her senior year of high school, she did not just fall in love with the campus. She also fell for Tellef Lundevall ’13, now her husband.
They two overlapped one semester — Lundevall, a football and basketball player, decided to play an extra season at Brown — and became good friends.
The two often spent their summers together on the Kennedy Compound in Cape Cod, “walking on the beach, looking at the fireworks and chatting in between on Snapchat,” Kennedy Cuomo said in an interview with The Herald.
“All of my friends knew that I had a crush on Tellef all of my four years at Brown,” she said. But it wasn’t until Brown’s Alumni Reunion Weekend in 2018 — six years after the couple first met — that they made it official with a kiss at the campus dance.
“We call it our inaugural kiss-aversary,” Kennedy Cuomo said. The two officially tied the knot earlier this summer on Cape Cod.
“People evolve from freshman year to senior year,” she said. “If you’re able to maintain a friendship with someone through your own evolution and theirs, that can lead to even stronger relationships.”
Many of the couple’s closest friends and colleagues from Brown celebrated their union — six out of 14 members of Kennedy Cuomo’s bridal party were Brown-affiliated, and six of Lundevall’s best men played football at Brown.
Isaac Fernandez Lopez ’27, who started a relationship three weeks ago, shares Kennedy Cuomo’s optimism about finding love on campus.
“Now that I am in a relationship, I fully get to become the kind of people I used to hate — those couples who wouldn’t stop yapping about their partners,” he said. “I mention her all the time, and I love it. It’s great, being annoying.”
But Fernandez Lopez said he has long avoided this kind of commitment. As a first-year, he mainly used dating apps like Tinder to connect with people, who often were not Brown students and were looking for short-term relationships.
More than 50% of Tinder users are between the ages of 18 and 25, and “college students are a huge part of that,” according to spokesperson Tomas Iriarte Reyes.
Tinder’s 2023 Future of Dating Report highlighted the low-pressure approach this age group of users applies to dating. Gen-Z prefers to use “terminology that doesn’t try to define a connection before they’re ready to.” Thus, phrases like “vibing” and “sneaky link” were born, as well as “situationship,” a term that embodies a commitment-free relationship as an intermediary between friends and dating.
In late September, 1,177 undergraduates answered questions about their relationship status in The Herald’s fall poll. Around 7% of respondents were hooking up with multiple people or in a casual relationship. Male respondents made up the majority of this category.
In 2018, Tinder launched TinderU, a feature designed for college students to connect with others from nearby schools. Its campus-specific profile additions allow students to share “common factors like graduation year, major, clubs and greek life to find a match,” Reyes said.
Fernandez Lopez is still friends with some people he met through the app, but he didn’t meet his current girlfriend there. “Nothing ended in disaster, but nothing ended in a relationship either.”
According to The Herald’s poll, over 60% of undergraduate students are single. 24.4% of students said they were single and searching for a relationship. Single female respondents were the most likely to be content with not being in a relationship, with about 30% of female respondents not looking for a partner.
Diqiu Liu ’27 doesn’t have a “fear of missing out” because she is single.
“I’ve met a lot of people who are so focused on improving themselves, that it inspires me to be less desperate to be in a relationship,” she said.
But Liu admits that it took time for her to value her independence in the way that she does.
“The purpose of being in a romantic relationship is to have someone to rely on, and always have your back,” Liu said. “Sometimes when I feel weak and small, I want that.”
As a teenager growing up in Beijing, China, Liu recalled being a big fan of American rom-coms. The romanticized view of love those films sometimes offer made her feel “like (she) had to meet that standard in order to be in a relationship.”
But the platonic support Liu found through her friendships at Brown, like with her roommate, taught her more about love than any rom-com ever could.
“We take care of each other in non-verbal ways,” she said. “People at Brown really respect each other and want to emotionally support one another.”
Even though Liu does hope to find love on College Hill one day, she sometimes wonders how she would fit the relationship into her life. “Being in a relationship requires extra effort to find time to spend with one another,” she said.
Lizaura Gomez Cabrera ’27, who is currently in a long-distance relationship, said that it is “really hard.” She started dating her boyfriend the summer before coming to Brown, so the majority of their relationship hasn’t been in person. “I constantly miss my partner, and it makes me feel homesick.”
The two try to prioritize their relationship amongst busy schedules and visit each other often. “As long as you make time and your partner also makes time, it works,” she said.
In the end, love at Brown is like love anywhere else — full of unpredictability, late-night texts and the occasional heartbreak that can open the door for something even better.
“I’m a big believer in love and that people are gonna find the right person,” Kennedy Cuomo said. While she had other relationship experiences at Brown, they were all just “learning experiences” until she dated Lundevall, she said.
“Surrounded by really great people who are still evolving themselves,” students have a unique opportunity to meet a potential future partner, she added.
And couples can even return to where it all started — Brown hosts weddings on campus for alumni, staff and current undergraduate and graduate students in Manning Chapel and the Brown Faculty Club.
Sanai Rashid was raised in Brooklyn and now lives in Long Island, New York. As an English and History concentrator, she is always looking for a way to amplify stories and histories previously unheard. When she is not writing, you can find her trying new pizza places in Providence or buying another whale stuffed animal.
