Immunity idols, tribal council, torches that represent one’s life—students, the Cal Poly tribe has spoken.
Think that you’re a Survivor know-it-all? Bet you couldn’t compete with the tribe members of the Cal Poly Survivor Club who, for eight weeks, immerse themselves in the wit, strategy, and physical challenges of the beloved game of CBS’s Survivor.
Better yet, these mega-fans also film and upload the competition to YouTube. You’re welcome—now you have your next binge watch.
Third-year student Derek Sadorra is this year’s co-president of the club as it heads into its eighth season after it started in 2022. Like the original show, the club hosts two seasons per year, just during the fall and spring quarters.
“It’s pretty much the exact same as Survivor,” Sadorra said. “You’re just not starving on an island.”
Sadorra said he took part in 2023. He’s played the game twice as a contestant, then spent last season as an executive producer.
“I’m a superfan of Survivor, so immediately when I saw this club I knew I had to be a part of it,” he said. “It’s been one of the biggest parts of my college experience so far.”
Brenna Gallagher leads alongside Sadorra as co-president. As a fourth-year student, she’s also played the game twice, and even won the fifth season of All-Stars—an edition where 25 former players return for a shot at redemption.
What did she win, you might ask? Fifty bucks and bragging rights, she said with a laugh.
Co-President Sadorra said the Cal Poly Survivor Club models its seasons after the real show. It designs similar physical and puzzle challenges and incorporates the traditions of tribal councils, like the voting urn or the extinguishing of a torch once a player has been voted off. The club also has a host that uses similar tones and phrases as show host Jeff Probst.
This isn’t some rookie production, though. Just like the CBS show, Sadorra said that Cal Poly’s eight-week season takes years to plan and complete.
“Preparing and creating a season takes so much longer because we have executive producers who take the summer planning out the structure and the twists,” he said. “We have an art department and idol crew. We take a couple weeks to advertise and cast the season, and we have an editing team that, almost a year later, creates everything into a season posted on YouTube. So although it takes an eight-week period of time creating one full season, it is sometimes two years in the process.”
“It’s like a part-time job,” Gallagher added.
While it’s going into its eighth season this fall, the club’s YouTube channel has episodes up to season 5 right now.
Watching the club’s production is like watching the real deal. There’s dramatic scenic shots and instrumental music, tribes, bandanas (in place of team BUFFs), tribal merges, and even immunity idols of a stuffed cow and penguin for players who win challenges.
Each episode starts with a physical challenge—like throwing water balloons at a pyramid of cups and then solving a puzzle that was 3D printed on campus. Students run around various parts of campus sporting their team bandanas.
“We have everything for our clubs stored in three big Home Depot buckets that are consistently traveling around people’s houses with all of our supplies,” Sadorra said. “We also do a lot of endurance challenges. We’ve done planking and wall sits, but we’ve also done the classic Survivor challenge, where you put your hand in the air and try to see how long you can last.”
The losing team then goes to tribal council to vote one member out, but before that’s shown, you hear from many of the players who film themselves talking to the camera about their strategies and relationships with their teammates.
Fourth year student Millie Harrison, who uses they/them pronouns, won Cal Poly’s seventh season, which they said they didn’t expect.
“Even at the final tribal council, when they’re reading out the votes of the jury, I still was like, it could be me, or it could be Brooklyn,” they said. “I wasn’t expecting it.”
When it came to strategy, Harrison said they wanted to remain as honest as possible but also knew that in the game of Survivor that can’t always be the case.
“Being a fan of the show, as much as I admire completely honest, completely loyal players … I wanted to be like that, but I also knew that they weren’t usually like the players that everyone remembers,” Harrison said. “I feel like the most cutthroat, successful players on Survivor do a little bit of lying and a little bit of backstabbing. So I was like, ‘I want to be remembered as a hero, but I’m not above lying.’”
They joined the club not only because of their love of the show, but to make friends—which might feel counterintuitive since everyone is competing against each other and voting their friends out of the game.
“We’re all competitive. We all love the game. We all kind of deep down want to win. And so it’s like, I have to vote out this person who I really love or have to work against or betray this person that I really want to be friends with down the line,” they said. “It’s a hard line to walk between. How do I convey to this person that I do want to be friends—that I do want to keep hanging out? But we’re having fun. It’s a game.”
Gallagher said during her second season playing, season 5, she took the strategy of being a social threat.
“I feel like I’ve taken so many psychology classes that I’m very good at, like, reading people’s body languages and just being able to empathize with them and knowing how they’d be feeling going into a vote,” she said. “Just reading people well, analyzing tribe dynamics and relationships, and things like that.”
Gallagher said she also joined the club for friends, after finding that sorority life just wasn’t for her. Similarly, she said she’s found the balance between playing and making friends to be challenging but has overall maintained her friendships.
“I’ve definitely cried a lot, but I’ve noticed that a lot of people are able to recognize it is just a game and people are going to do whatever it takes to win,” she said. “And then we step back and be like, OK, you know what? We’re friends beyond this.”
Even if students aren’t interested in playing the game or being a part of production, Cal Poly Survivor has other ways for superfans to connect, Sadorra said—like hosting watch parties, beach parties, and playing pickleball and capture the flag.
“I think the most important part about this club is that you get to meet these people with the same interest,” he said. “We’re all nerdy, superfans of Survivor, and this is a great way for us to take a step back from our classes and the drama of college life and find these people who share the same interest or same love for the show.” ∆
Reach Staff Writer Libbey Hanson at lhanson@newtimesslo.com.
Clarification, September 11, 2025 1:19 pm: Editor's note: This story was updated to reflect Millie Harrison's preferred pronouns.
This article appears in Student Guide 2025.