Are smoking and religion, or lack thereof, critical issues? Do relationships fall down political-party lines? Are multi-ethnic relationships out of the question?
These are just a few of the questions posed by Ohio State's newest way to meet people: BuckeyeMatch.org.
Established by the International Health Interest Group at the College of Medicine as a project to help raise funds for international service projects, BuckeyeMatch.org allows students to describe themselves and specifically what they are looking for in a friend or lover. A list of students who match these descriptions will be sent via e-mail.
If the students are interested in contacting one another, the cost is one dollar. This dollar goes directly to IHIG, which advocates and supports the efforts of medical students to go abroad to foreign countries like Bolivia, India, Mauritania and Zambia, to provide health-related services like physical exams, medicine deliveries, help in surgeries and assistance at AIDS orphanages.
"All funds raised through BuckeyeMatch.org will be directly used to help defray the costs of performing volunteer service projects in foreign countries, which can be prohibitively expensive," said Neil Jenkins, spokesman for IHIG.
Dustin Key, a recently accepted OSU student, said he thinks this program is going to make his college career even more fun.
"It's one of those reoccurring nightmares that you go off to college and never really make any friends … but this will help ensure that students who are interested in and looking for the same things will be able to find each other on this huge campus," Key said.
As of the 2000 census, only 54.5 percent of Ohio adults were married.
Other online dating services such as Match.com and eHarmony.com cost about $40 to join while BuckeyeMatch.org is free to fill out and only costs one dollar to contact matches.
Currently, BuckeyeMatch.org does not give students the opportunity to post pictures, but the creators hope to generate enough interest in the site that they will soon be able to change this.
After just a few short minutes of answering questions, students might be on their way to meeting their soul mate without ever having to leave their living rooms and "hopefully in (this) process participants will have fun, meet new people and learn something about themselves. If so, we hope they show their appreciation by donating to IHIG," Jenkins said.
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