They came to me in the middle of the night. They were young and beautiful and dressed up like they were about to go out. I had about an hour’s warning, and their knock on the door was light so as to wake no one who wasn’t already up. When they got to my doorstep, I was ready. I knew it would be hasty and impromptu, but there’s no reason even a simple wedding can’t be beautiful.

We shared grapes and wine, and I told them that what begins as new and perfect fruit can end up a rich, fermented, much-changed substance that the vine might not recognize. They tasted both and said their vows, and we signed the paperwork. With a little help from their friends, they were married.

In the state of California, any recognized member of the church clergy can marry individuals to one another if the couple has a license. Over the years, I’ve married a handful of couples in the woods and in my living room. I’ve seen the state and the nation struggle over the definition of marriage, and I’ve seen it take many forms. I’ve heard the academic and feminist arguments that marriage was, for many centuries, a primarily economic arrangement to secure the merging and inheritance of property. Much about marriage has changed, but for the very rich and the very poor, the economic part remains the same.

The rich have assets to protect. They draw up contracts and agreements to ensure no one is seduced into a holy and blissful union by a heartless and calculating gold digger.

The poor have other arrangements to make. We are more likely to cohabitate to save money, whether it is appropriate for the relationship or not. In my life, I have known men and women who choose to stay with partners who are abusive or merely unsuited because breaking up means giving up a place to call home.

My friends who were married that night in my living room loved one another and probably would have chosen to marry at some point. The reason they came to me with so little notice, however, was not a pregnancy or a shotgun or even a romantic whim. It was the deadline for FAFSA submissions for the following academic year. Too young to be considered independent from their parents, they were desperate for enough financial aid to transfer to a four-year university. They were the children of vanishing middle class. On paper, their folks could afford to contribute to their tuition, but real life is complicated with gambling addictions and jobs that don’t offer health care.

It wasn’t young love. It wasn’t an impetuous gesture or an adherence to belief. It was a financial decision. Like many decisions forced upon us by poverty, it was a decision that puts the future in jeopardy — no money down, crippling credit terms down the road. The FAFSA considers married students independent and places a student in a wholly separate category for aid. Choosing to marry now to qualify for aid may result in a possibly messy and potentially expensive divorce later, but in the moment, we do what we must. In the meantime, we give one another the gift of an education otherwise out of reach.

Tuition has outpaced the cost of living, outpaced inflation and shows no sign of slowing. People all over are taking drastic measures to afford school, and at the University of California, we are no different. A recent discussion on the cost of housing led some of my classmates to speculate on the appearance of quad dorms with four bunks to a room and the feasibility of (not kidding) camping on the Glade and writing a blog called The Great Outdorms. The idea of getting married for mercenary causes may rankle the romantic soul, but in the scheme of desperation, it seems almost a tame solution.

In my tradition, couples being wed grasp hands and are gently tied together to symbolize their bond. When this couple was tied, I told them to remember that it’s only one hand they’ve given and that the other remains free. True of their marriage, this also became a symbol of their shared commitment to helping one another get through school, support one another’s dreams and be good partners; they were not entirely bound, but they were also not entirely free.

Marriage was never pure. It is sometimes undertaken in the spirit of perfect altruism and true love, but my friends’ practical decision was perfectly in line with the long and fraught history of this evolving institution. They might have given up, waited a few years or taken on crushing loans to move forward with their education. A license to marry costs $97 and takes effect the moment both people say “I do.” They’re responsible to one another and for one another, and they take that seriously. This year, they’ll both graduate from a UC school with their respective bachelor’s degrees.

I now pronounce you educated to the minimum degree necessary to get a decent job.

Meg Elison writes the Monday column on financial issues affecting UC Berkeley students.Contact Meg Elison at melison@dailycal.org.

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One of the things that surprised me most when I came to college was meeting young couples around the area who met in college and are now married with children. For some reason, I’ve always had the impression that marriage was something to worry about after all the studying part of life is done (i.e. after I have the graduation certificate in hand with a job secured), but when I found out that people sitting in my classes could be married, I started to wonder if I should start thinking about marriage earlier on too.

Now, having entered my junior year of college, things are getting real. Some serious couples are starting to form around me (I’m secretly scared they might actually get married), and my parents are sneakily poking at me: “Do you have anyone you’re seeing?” I never have a problem with giving them a straight-up “no,” but the fact that they’re asking such questions doesn’t seem like a good sign. My dad, who has always been the type to tell me to stay away from boys, suddenly declared that he’s expecting me to get married within the next five years. That’s a scary thought indeed.

Apparently, I’m not the only one who started thinking about marriage. It is a topic that sometimes awkwardly finds its way into random conversations with my close friends. I often get pleasantly surprised to find that guys think about marriage too. But even as we talk about marriage among ourselves, there always seems to be a sense of fear — fear of the unknown, the unpredictable, what is to come, probably — that ends our conversations with ellipses.

As a college student myself, I can attest to how much the future stresses students out. It took me a whole year and half to settle on a major, only to realize that it wasn’t quite what I was looking for. Now, as a junior, I’m sitting on needles as I apply to and hear back from companies for summer internships. But marriage is a lot more serious than finding a major and a lot more complicated than applying for jobs. People are much more fragile, fickle and unpredictable than the economy, and a marriage is much more permanent than a career. Plus, you have to be in love with that person, whatever that means.

This is probably how the hookup culture got started. Since it’s too much stress to find that one person to be with “until death do (you) apart,” we find an alternative option that requires little to no responsibility whatsoever. It sure feeds the hormones with quick and noncommittal emotions and sex. It’s also the perfect option for this fast-paced 21st-century lifestyle, in which no one really wants to be too committed to anything, because everyone is committed to so many other things that are just as important.

So, what does marriage mean to those of us who live in the hookup generation?

We are so accustomed to single-use cups, bags, utensils, water bottles, price tags, makeup removers, contact lenses. Some of us don’t even wear our clothes and shoes for more than a few years. We’re obviously getting too used to the idea that we can conveniently throw out things that stop working and get new ones to replace them.

So my question for you, then, is this: Is marriage going out-of-date? I wouldn’t be surprised if 20 years down the road, people just stop getting married and live the hookup lifestyle for the rest of their lives — in fact, it’s already happening in some places.

There’s always that “awww” moment when you see an old couple, each member with white or no hair, who are celebrating their 70th anniversary — you know, those girls who were sitting behind you going “awww” when you were watching the animated movie “Up” in the theatre. “That’s so sweet,” people say. Nope, I’m sure the 70 years of living with each other wasn’t all butterflies, and I’m pretty sure there were more bitter days than sweet ones, as can be seen from my own parents’ celebration of 20 years of marriage a few years ago.

But the fact that they endured through the bitter times together, that they still chose to stick together in trust, that they saw each other mature through their own inhibitions and weaknesses — that’s romantic.

So you can see why I am hesitant about marriages. They are — or at least used to be — associated with a sense of permanence that is unusual in today’s world. But maybe that’s not so scary after all.

Editor’s Note: Sex on Tuesday will return Feb. 12.

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Valentina Fung/Staff

A massive crisis is quietly building with rapidly burgeoning student college loans caused by equally snowballing increases in college costs: the inability of indebted college students to marry and raise children after graduation. Yet there is an answer to this problem.

As noted in a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, student loans taken out to pay for college costs now exceed $1 trillion nationally! And, as also noted in the article, these loans are preventing former students from undertaking the costs of marriage and, even more, bearing and rearing children.

A friend’s grandchild and her husband — both college graduates — have incurred together a total of over a quarter of a million dollars of debt. They have monthly payments exceeding $2,000. How can they or those like them finance a family?

Recent demonstrations by students at Fresno State and the University of California speak loudly of the terrible burden that the increases of tuition and fees are placing on the shoulders of our youngsters.

So what is the answer? To partially forgive a student’s loan when a child is born and to do so for each subsequent child as well. There is precedent for this in the student loan program already: If a student works for either a nonprofit or a government entity for 10 years,  then his remaining federal student loan balance will be canceled on eligible loans. So why not extend this to having children?

There is also precedent for favoring  children in the U.S. Every time a child is born, a person gets an additional exemption on his income tax, thereby reducing his tax burden. Additionally, we have created tax-favored educational saving accounts and have shielded children up to age 26 by allowing them to be on their parents’ medical policies.

And such child-friendly policies abound in other nations. France has created a superb system of free or low-cost child care centers subsidized by the government to ease the burden of working mothers. Finland gives every mother a full year’s leave of absence (unpaid) with the right to return to her job. Many nations actually give a cash subsidy upon the birth of a child.

Why is this loan forgiveness important? At a minimum, those with college loans should have the ability to rear a family as well as all other members of society. Why should we single out those with loans to inhibit them from starting a family?

And I would argue that such individuals are the ones we want most of all to have families. They have shown the willingness to dream of the future, to strive to improve themselves and, by extension, their society. Who else would be better chosen to replace our aging population with new gifted and motivated children than this multicultural, multiethnic lower- and middle-class group?

How would this work? For each child a woman bore or person adopted, he or she would receive a partial per percentage credit on his or her student loan. The same would be true for each subsequent child. Perhaps the fourth child could wipe out the loan entirely. A reduction per child would partially compensate for the increased cost of the child. I would extend the partial forgiveness to legally married spouses, since they are the ones additionally burdened with the legal obligation of support.

Since their legal obligation is less clear, cohabiting spouses would be barred. This would strike a blow for reinforcing traditional marriage, which has been losing ground in the U.S.

We are facing a barren landscape where our most educated young people are heavily burdened with loan payments, inhibiting them from starting a family when they are the ones who hold the future of all of us in their hands. It is time to address this problem by giving relief and support to them.

Phil Fullerton is a resident of Fresno.

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Please sir, can I have some more?” Oliver Twist was just a small, blonde, English orphan with an empty metal bowl and a big dream. He ran out of gruel. He wanted more. So do I, and so, I postulate, do you. Allow me to explain.

Is it Thursday already? I’m having trouble keeping track of the days this week because I went into hibernation on Monday in a misguided attempt to avoid Valentine’s Day completely. I should have realized that this is impossible. No matter what your opinion is on Valentine’s Day, it cannot be ignored. It’s there, all red and pink and sickly sweet, sitting in the middle of your otherwise ordinary February week. You can love it, hate it, feign indifference to it, or refuse to celebrate it, but you have to acknowledge its existence. Even two days after Valentine’s Day, you’re bound to pick up a paper and see some schmuck still writing about this sorry excuse for a holiday.

Every year, Valentine’s Day leaves us with the lingering feeling that it is simply not okay to be alone. It makes us feel that there must be something missing from your life if you don’t have someone special in it; that being busy and happy and loving your friends and your family is not enough to fill the empty metal-bowl-shaped void — you need more. You need someone else to complete you.

This is my problem with Valentine’s Day. But obviously, as I am single, I am also bitter and jealous. There’s the Valentine’s Day trap, snapping shut around my ankles. You can’t say you hate it without seeming like a bitter spinster. You can’t admit you love it without seeming smug and loved-up. And you can’t insist you don’t care about it, really, not at all, because then it seems like you actually care quite a lot.

A few years ago, as I was recovering from a break-up, a friend of mine offered this comforting gem: “When you think about it,” he said, patting me soothingly on the shoulder, “ultimately, we’re all totally alone.” After I’d stopped sobbing and my friend found an icepack to press against the part of his face I had punched, I calmed down and realized that he might be right. We forge strong bonds with other people from birth and throughout our lives, but when it comes to the crunch, we have to fend for ourselves. We live in the center of our own small universes. We make our own decisions, create our own opportunities and plan our own parties. In many ways, we lead more isolated lives than any other generation before us, but as a society, we are still collectively obsessed with finding a partner. Why do we need the companionship of another person to make it all mean something? Surely it is totally possible to be happy all on your own?

Sadly, most heroes and heroines in the history of literature and cinema don’t seem to think so, and Valentine’s Day is just one more reminder that all the chocolate in the world won’t make the pain stop. I’ve tried to live a full and happy life without someone else by my side — really, I have, but sometimes I find it difficult to get out of bed in the mornings because there is no one there to share the experience, moment by sleepy, cranky moment. On Friday and Saturday nights, I like to stay at home and drink ferociously strong coffee while intermittently crying and working on my anthology of unrequited love poetry. (I’m going to call it “Hopeless Singles No Longer Wish to Mingle.”) I spent the 14th of February wandering distractedly around campus, cursing the blue California skies while wishing rain would fall to fill the gaping hole in my heart.

I often wonder: what’s it like out there in the big bad world when you have someone else beside you to guide you every step of the way? It’s really quite dangerous to be alone. I’m a rather clumsy person, and I dearly wish I had someone to catch me every time I fall over chairs or my own feet. I mean, one of these days I might hit my head and totally forget the last five years of my life, and I highly doubt Channing Tatum would bother to try and bring me back to the present.

As a child, I used to wear my nicest dress to the playground in the park on Valentine’s Day in the hope that a nice boy would ask me to marry him and that’d be the end of that. No more searching or yearning or any of the things we single people are supposed to do. These days, I know better than to try to pick up men in parks, and I refuse to let Valentine’s Day advertising tell me that there’s something missing in my life. I am happy and fulfilled just as I am. I refuse to believe that it is impossible to live happily ever after on your own. But in the end, my self affirmations are just not enough. Bah, humbug.

Like Oliver Twist, in the end, I still want more.

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