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High school seniors around the country are gearing up for brutal breakups with their significant others as they get ready to head to campus. The University of Wisconsin-Madison freshman breakup hotline can be reached at (608) MISS YOU, where a semi-professional breakup counselor will listen to your relationship qualms and advise next steps for the rest of the academic year.
Callers are instructed to dial extra numbers to specify their support. They can press one to talk to a counselor, two for a sophomore who had to call last year, three to post a poll on YikYak to decide next steps and four to generate a playlist tailored to your relationship. Keys five through nine specify your tastes in music and your feelings about the breakup, and you can even press zero for someone who will interrupt you to compare your relationship to their two-week situationship with an accounting major.
“We get the most traffic after the first two weeks of classes,” Kevin Cronin, a sophomore operator told The Beet. “Around that time, a lot of freshmen decide they don’t want to do distance. The second wave comes after Thanksgiving, when everyone goes home and decides breaking up in person is better. Then they go deal with their entire families for the weekend.”
The hotline recently upgraded their services, collaborating with award-winning student-run radio station WSUM 91.7 FM Madison to curate breakup playlists. Callers can pick different playlists based on the severity of the breakup, and then by genre.
Cronin told The Beet, “We’re actually thinking of discontinuing the program, since every time we let someone listen to Jeff Buckley they call again at least three times in the next week.”
Due to budget cuts, the hotline was reduced to a talking stage by the university in 2024, with former Chancellor Mnookin friend-zoning more than half of their funding and staff.
“It just wasn’t right. These are important moments in freshmen’s lives. The first-year college breakup happens to about 70% of all incoming freshmen with significant others, and 85% of them call again to follow up crying in the communal showers at 3 a.m,” Cronin said.
Many other operators complain of understaffing and limited space to work. “It’s just a little better than hearing about your friends’ evil exes, but I have to put some of them on hold because the guy on line three got dumped with an Instagram reel.” One counselor, who asked to be anonymous as they work through their own situationship fallout, told The Beet, “There’s not even an actual call center. We just squat in the Bakke nap rooms and hope security doesn’t notice us staying there overnight.”
