In a quickly evolving controversy, Writing Fellows teacher Jennifer Dracos-Tice announced earlier this month that Westminster’s Writing Center will now become the Dating Center where students can come for love and relationship advice. This decision took Westminster’s community by storm, leaving many students outraged.

            “I’m outraged,” announced junior Sam Cohn on her grade-wide Group Chat just minutes following the email. “I didn’t know we had a writing center.”

            Fellow junior Anand Srinivasan commented, “I’ve never been there, but I always liked the idea that we had a place to get papers edited. How can they just take that idea away from us?”

            Dracos-Tice responded to these allegations, stating, “These reactions prove exactly why we needed to rebrand the Writing Center in the first place. We haven’t had a student voluntarily sign up since 2017.”

            The Dating Center will provide one-on-one consultations about a student’s love life with exceptionally unhelpful advice, a tradition brought over from its time as the Writing Center. In an exclusive statement to the Bi-Line, Dracos-Tice revealed that the new Dating Center would be staffed by former Writing Fellows, now called Dating Liaisons, as well as English teachers who would be required to go through extensive faculty meetings to prepare them to staff the Dating Center.

            Faculty response for the new Dating Center is overwhelmingly positive. One such faculty member, English teacher Mario Chard, who will soon be staffing the Dating Center, commented between sips of his Yerba Mate. “Right now, this school is a zoo, but with my help, we can make this place into the jungle. That is, if I make it through the faculty meetings.”

            One concern raised by some faculty members at a recent meeting was that the new space might be used inappropriately. This concern was quickly quelled when Dr. Scott Stewart agreed to move one of his security cameras from the PLARTS rooms into the Dating Center.

            As students have had time to process this major shift, the initial outrage has simmered down, and many students are beginning to enjoy the idea, especially following Dracos-Tices’s announcement that on Thursdays the Dating Center will be open for couples to come in for free couples counseling – if they have the same free period, of course.

            “I already told my boyfriend Scott that he has to go with me. I think it’d be such a great way to strengthen our already strong relationship,” said senior Anna Davis.

            Despite this optimism, some members of the student body remain concerned about the new Dating Center. Senior Scott Arbery voiced his concern about the new Thursday couples counseling. 

“My girlfriend is trying to take me there for couples counseling,” said Arbery. “Does she think that we’re having problems? I mean, I don’t think we’re having problems. Unless there’s something she hasn’t told me about. I don’t sound weird, do I? Do I?”

            Regardless, Westminster students will have to wait until May at the earliest to use the new Dating Center as President Keith Evans extends online classes through April. When asked how the new Dating Center would respond to this announcement, Dracos-Tice stated that she was working alongside computer-science teacher Mitchell Griest in implementing his Valentine’s Day algorithm into a new dating app that would be “half-Tinder, half-Bumble while encouraging users to follow Westminster’s Christian mission in seeking to model their relationships off of the scriptural description of Jesus.” The specifics of how and when this app will become available has not yet been announced. 

            Amidst all of this chaos, one voice strikes through the noise, senior Anup Bottu: “I just want to get my paper edited.”