Spring2024 41 COURTESY OF CHAD AND PAMELA CARLOW AND KAMERON AND HANNAH KADOOKA to impress her — not with my looks, of course, but with my strong capability to complete homework,” Huang told the New Yorker in 2023. The advent of the internet wrought another change. It “provided opportunities for those who were more introverted, who needed another communication vehicle through which they can express themselves,” says Larry Roper, VP for Student Affairs at Oregon State from 1995 to 2014. “It’s hard to recall the large number of students with whom I spoke who had never dated before they came to college,” Roper says. With a laugh, he adds: “It was always this, ‘How do I meet somebody? And, how do I ask somebody to go on a date with me?’ The expectation was, if I’m ever going to find anybody, this is where I have to do it.” Though a fall 2023 survey by Axios and Generation Lab found that a majority of college-age students in relationships met in person, rather than through a screen, Emma Coke says that in her experience, dating apps rule on campus. “They’re everywhere,” says Coke, the editor-in-chief of the Beaver’s Digest, Oregon State’s undergraduate lifestyle magazine. “I don’t think there’s a whole lot of meeting people organically.” Sometimes, she says, her friends ask her to “play Tinder” — swiping through the app on their behalf, since she is already in a relationship. This February, the Beaver’s Digest published an issue devoted to romantic relationships, including stories about hookup culture (“still super prevalent”), dating long-distance, sexual health and more. M MANY STUDENTS SEE COLLEGE AS “the time when they’re on their own and they have to create their own life and their own future,” Roper says. “For some people, a partner is part of that.” No matter how they started, lasting love stories whose opening lines were written in the student years are now interwoven with OSU’s history, as evidenced by the tens of thousands of couples in the alumni database — as well as alumni who reconnect later in life. This is an OSU love story: Its protagonists are roommates and lab partners, members of study groups, dance classes and extracurricular field trips. It’s the shy approach and the brave request that a potential partner hold a spot on their figurative dance card for you. It’s to nestle beneath the boughs of the Trysting Tree, on the side away from the bright lights, and to thumb the pages of the Fusser’s Guide, searching for the one who caught your gaze. Chad Pamela Parlow The first time Chad Parlow, ’99, asked out Pamela Perkins, ’00, to whom he’s now been married for 20 years, it didn’t go so well. “Would you like to go get a coffee?” he asked. “I don’t like coffee,” she replied. Undeterred, Chad countered, “You can get something else to drink besides coffee.” Pamela still didn’t bite. “I have a drink right here,” she said. Chad trudged back to his dorm — but when he saw her in the hallway a week later, he thought he’d try one more time. He invited her to a party; this time, she said yes. As an engineer, she’s “nothing if not literal,” Chad says now. “She didn’t realize I was trying to ask her out.” Kameron Hannah Kadooka Kameron Kadooka, ’12, hadn’t officially started his first year at Oregon State, but he already had a crush. The setting was McAlexander Fieldhouse; the woman who’d caught his eye, Hannah McMahon, ’12, a peer in the outdoor leadership program Footsteps. Throughout his first year, they spent hours together as friends — including an outing to Waldo Hall to hunt for the residence’s famed ghost. “Hannah ended up accidentally giving me a fat lip after I tried to scare her,” Kameron says. They finally started dating senior year. When he proposed, it was in McAlexander. “I thought it was fitting to start the rest of our lives together right where it all started,” he says. ↗ It took some persistence on Chad’s part, but he and Pamela finally had a first date. ۄ Hannah and Kameron with baby Riley, 15 years after their first meeting in McAlexander Fieldhouse.
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