While most viewers gagged and cringed while watching the popular NBC show “Fear Factor,” a select group of Fairfield students were just itching for the chance to participate in such a competition.
On Saturday night, 10 Fairfield students got a shot to prove they would do anything for a hundred-dollar Visa cash card or a fifty-dollar gift basket of Fairfield apparel.
Contestants bobbed for apples, ate dog biscuits, went on a scavenger hunt, built Legos in ice water and raced on big wheel tricycles in front of a small crowd in the lower level of the BCC.
In the final round, contestants drank a concoction of eggnog, herring, sour cream, chips, cracker jacks, grape jelly, hot sauce, mayo, salsa and blue cheese.
Ted Swiderski’ 09 won the contest and said that he told himself before drinking the mixture to just “suck it up, and do it.”
Although Swiderski struggled to drink the final mixture, he felt the hardest part of the contest was the scavenger hunt.
“Running across campus was hard. The legos were pretty hard too because my hands went numb, and I kept dropping the pieces,” he said.
FUSA members Jen Golia’ 10 and Tom Vitilo’ 09 organized the event.
“There was a lot of shopping involved. We also had to deal with the limited number of events we could hold,” Golia said.
Vitlo also commented on the limitations.
“We could only do so much. We weren’t allowed to do anything with animals, and we couldn’t make them keep eating gross stuff. There was a liability involved also,” he said.
But Golia and Vitlo agreed that the hardest part of the event was keeping the crowd engaged.
“At the beginning of the event, there were a lot of people but as it moved on a lot of people left, especially during the scavenger hunt,” they said.
In order to keep the crowd entertained, the audience could volunteer to eat dog food for a Fairfield t-shirt.
Pat Hogan’10 wasn’t completely disgusted with the dog food.
“They weren’t that bad, they were just hard to swallow,” he said.
Another contestant, Chris Dianna’09 said he “felt bad for his dog” after completing the event whereas Frank Fioretti’10 was disappointed with the earlier events.
“I thought there would be fear stuff, not bobbing for apples,” he said.
The majority of expenses, $280, went towards the prizes, according to Vitlo who said there is a chance this event will happen again.
“We will go to the event evaluation, and go over what was good and bad, and what we can change if we do it again,” he said.
If there is a re run, expect Swiderski to be there defending his title.
“I would definitely do it again; it was a lot of fun,” he said.
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