No Psychopaths Here

"ClassMates is safer than any of the other publications, because ours is a control group [of students] with the same interests and the same backgrounds," Kramer says. "It is not going to attract any Tom, Dick or Harry off the street."

"They are safe, they are students, they are your friends," Kramer says. "How many psychopaths are running around this campus or any other campus?" She adds, "It's for fun people--they haven't been dateless and desperate."

But some Harvard students say the student-only personals are as stigmatized as those run in other publications.

"It's creepy, it's unnatural," says Norman Gholson '88. "I'm not interested in being romantic with someone who isn't a friend of mine." Adds Mike Eilperin '90, "I'd be afraid of the type of people who respond."

Kramer says ClassMates' clientele is "not looking for someone to marry. Rather, they are looking for fun and a way to meet new people." But she adds, 'I don't think anyone is looking for cheap sex." The editors say they have not had to refuse any submissions.

Each personal elicits an average of 13 responses, most of which are detailed and creative, not jokes, according to Alper. Kramer says many responses come from graduate students, including "med students who don't want to hear about cadavers any more."

"Letters were rolling in, "Kate Webster '87 says about her ad. She adds, "whenever I get bored I just pick up the letters and call them." Webster says she is most likely to answer letters which sound down-to-earth.

Testing The Waters

At first afraid of ClassMates' readership, Webster tested its audience by placing two ads, one asking for people interested in having "a good time," the other relatively more innocent. She says she was impressed that the less suggestive ad received more responses.

"The comparative response said to me that it is real. I'm a lot less wary now," says Webster.

"I haven't answered in a long time and I am in a kind of rut now," says Webster. "So I think I might call on of my respondents."

A Harvard upperclassman says that after nine dates with nine different guys she "is the envy of [her] hall." A Quincy House senior says she specified that she was six feet tall and received a response from a law student who is six feet, four inches tall--which was "pretty psych."

Alper and Kramer, who have placed ads in every issue, say their responses have included a puzzle, a mock resume, a photo of Mel Gibson, and a letter from a medical student written on a diagram of a skeleton.

One Quincy House resident says she fills her ads with specific allusions to songs and performers she likes in order to garner compatible respondents. She has included lines from Elvis Costello and Joe Jackson because she says people who pick up on these cues must have something in common with her.