The Tribe Has Spoken: Students Recreate Reality Show ‘Survivor’

Survivor: Claremont is a club that has turned a reality television show into real-time fun. Based on CBS’ Emmy-winning series, the club incorporates mental and physical challenges, secret negotiations, and plot twists. Although a Pitzer student founded Survivor: Claremont, it has since grown to include students from all The Claremont Colleges in a battle of wits—with a cardboard cutout of TV host Jeff Probst to boot.  

Survivor leaves castaways on an isolated location (often in Fiji) to live off the land and compete for a million-dollar prize. Contestants struggle against the elements and each other until one challenger achieves the title of “Sole Survivor” and millionaire.

What does the competition look like in Survivor: Claremont?

“The prize is bragging rights, the joy of victory!” declared George Zhang ’25, a human biology major and the executive producer for the club. “We’re mirroring the Survivor experience for the superfans who say, ‘This is something I’ve always wanted to do, except I don’t think I could last on an island without my bed.’”

Instead of going to the Claremont wilderness, the club focuses on challenges and team-building experiences that happen throughout the semester. Players also compete or search for immunity idols hidden on the campuses to protect them from elimination. Like CBS’ Survivor, the contestants vote each other out until only a few are left. Then the eliminated contestants vote to choose the winner.

Zhang joined Survivor: Claremont as a contestant not long after Will Pakenas ’24 founded the club in 2022. He loved it so much that he made the club his passion project. It enables him to “take a step back from the academic sphere of numbers and graphs.”

Zhang and other crew members meet weekly to design the games. Challenges have ranged from completing puzzles to capturing the flag to being the last person to take their hand off The Massoud (the glass building colloquially known as “The Cube”) at Claremont McKenna College. One of Zhang’s favorite challenges was human battleship, in which people became stand-ins for warships on a grid and tried to guess the location of the opposing team’s warships.

Zhang spends hours in the lab as a science student, but the club allows him to innovate in a different way.

“It’s one of my creative outlets,” he said. “There’s a lot of creativity in science that I also appreciate, but this is a different type of creativity. It’s less about planning hypotheses and experiments and more about how do these people interact.”

Thinking on their feet

Survivor: Claremont’s crew has many roles: writing clues, filming, organizing materials, and hiding immunity idols. The executive team members oversee these efforts, including biochemistry major Amber Mogg ’26.  

Most of the executive team are STEM majors, which Mogg said is unique compared to Survivor clubs at other universities that are run by film studies majors. Mogg enjoys flexing her creative muscles while working on the challenges.

“It’s been nice to have a place where we can do lots of crafting and thinking on our feet and problem solving to make our club as fun as possible for different people,” said Mogg.

For their sixth season this fall, the club took inspiration from Survivor: Blood vs. Water, which pitted loved ones against each other. People applied in pairs with their friend, roommate, or partner and then were split into different tribes.

One of the first meetings featured a challenge for rewards and another for immunity. First, the tribes raced to make a camp flag and get the most people to root for them on Instagram. Then, competitors played “The Newlywed Game” with the partners they originally applied with. Whoever knew their partner best would earn immunity.

“We put them back-to-back and asked questions like, ‘What was the first concert your partner went to?’” said Zhang. He recalled an amusing discovery that one pair made. “These two girls were friends for four years. One of them just found out her friend was not born in India but Ohio!”

Alexa Turner ’27 applied for this season with her friend Hobie Wolff ’27.

“I always thought that the biggest motivation for winning was the cash prize, but being part of the show has made me realize that the money is probably a lesser motivation,” said Turner. “It comes down to competitiveness in general.”

Turner found that this competitive spirit is more lighthearted than high stakes, even as she has played against her friend. They both agreed that it’s just a fun game. Zhang shared a similar feeling. 

“You could consider it the wholesome version of Survivor,” said Zhang. “We market it as scheming and plotting without the human suffering. The thrill without the negativity.”

Turner described how doing scavenger hunt tasks around campus for one challenge made her feel ridiculous, but that was also a big part of her enjoyment.  

“This club can evoke the Claremont spirit as it highlights getting into an activity just for the fun of doing it and meeting new people,” said Turner. “Survivor: Claremont can even help you develop communication, teamwork, and problem-solving skills.”

Zhang and the crew often encourage participants and remind them that the game is about the sake of adventure.

“It’s important to remind them that they’re not being voted out because people don’t like them but because alliances didn’t work out,” said Zhang. “It’s not a personal reflection on them.”

YouTube-worthy?

The club started filming their show in their third season, but they want to ensure participants are comfortable with how they appear before putting up episodes on YouTube.

“On Survivor, you’re trying to create spectacle,” said Zhang. “It’s good for TV. We don’t want that because these are people walking around campus who see each other all the time.”

Mogg said that everyone is invited to participate in the club at whatever level of commitment they want. Whether it’s taking pictures, planning logistics, or crafting, students bring many skill sets to the games.

“It’s the best feeling when everyone is having fun and getting really into it,” said Mogg.

The club also hosts weekly watch parties of CBS’ Survivor in the Ponderosa Room at The Claremont Colleges Library. Building community with people he’d never otherwise meet is what Zhang appreciates most.

“I’ve met about 75 different people through the club,” said Zhang. “That’s 75 new friendly faces. These people pop up in my physics class, dining halls, everywhere. There are so many people coming from all these places and walks of life, and what brings them together is loving Survivor.”