The Tribe Has Spoken

Two evenings a week during the fall and spring semesters, the “cast” of Survivor: UConn meets behind the Homer Babbidge Library for tribal council followed by an elaborate challenge, modeled after the long-running CBS competition show “Survivor.” Except for the weeks on end without showers or real food — and, sure, the competitors are sleeping in residence halls instead of makeshift shelters — it’s all here: immunity necklaces, idols, alliances, blindsides, voting out castmates, tiki torches. They even film and produce a show of the proceedings.

“I think of it as one massive brain-numbing puzzle, almost. … You never really know what’s going on, even if you think you know what’s going on,” says club vice president Sarah Vial ’26 (CLAS), a journalism and sociology double major from Bristol, Connecticut, who, along with current president Charles Langworth ’26 (CLAS), applied, interviewed, and was accepted to play during her first month at UConn. The gameplay gets just as strategic as it does on TV, says Vial. “College students are very perceptive, very competitive, and they understand that this environment is really out of the norm.”

How does that work out for a group of mostly first-years looking for friends?

“Consistently, after the season’s finished up, people become really close,” says Langworth, a psychological sciences major from Trumbull, Connecticut. “There’s a guy in our season who went on to win, who I voted to oust four times — he’s my roommate now.”