Sisolak proves to be a survivor

Jennifer Knight

Thursday, May 1, 2003 | 8:36 a.m.

Regent Steve Sisolak has survived some rocky times on the board -- and now he is the winner of a "Survivor"-type game conducted by University of Nevada, Las Vegas, students.

The goal of the game was to see which of 12 contestants could survive 12 rounds of thought-provoking -- and sometimes shallow -- questions and emerge as the sole survivor.

Sisolak turned out to be last castaway on the virtual island.

"Sometimes I feel like I'm on an island all by myself anyways," Sisolak said. "The votes on my board are usually 12 to 1."

Among the contestants in the game run by the Rebel Yell campus newspaper staff were a professor, two regents, an alumnus, an administrator and a dog named Penelope.

Each week students could log on to the newspaper's website and vote a contestant off the "island." (Penelope the Pug got a little help with her answers.)

Regent Howard Rosenberg survived until Round 7, when the question "What is your favorite movie quote?" KO'd him.

Rosenberg selected this quote from "Auntie Mame:"

"Come on, Agnes. Live! Live! Live! Life is a banquet and most poor (expletives) are starving to death!"

Evidently that failed to make the cut with voters.

"I was just crushed," Rosenberg joked. "I cried for at least 20 seconds."

In the end, the game garnered more feedback from readers than the war in Iraq, the paper's editor said.

"We just were trying to have fun," said Erik Ball, editor of the Rebel Yell. "This was something that people would pick up the paper and specifically look for."

The newspaper collected more than 13,000 votes in the game over more than two months. Last month, student elections generated about 1,600 votes, according to the Rebel Yell, although none of those votes was duplicated.

The game, Ball said, provided something that students just weren't getting in class -- a little levity.

"I've always said that I think it is an important thing that there be an element of fluff in a college newspaper," Ball said.

Questions for the game included what kind of cheese the contestant would be and why, who their hero was and what their definition of love was.

One man working off-campus caught wind of the contest and got hooked.

"I just followed it because it was funny," said Jose Barela, who works at Einstein Bagels across from UNLV's campus. "I picked one guy to win. He was kind of a wild card but he didn't get picked."

Some students got so caught up in the game that there were attempts to skew the results, Ball said.

"We found people were registering under a fake name and just logging on and voting over and over again," Ball said.

Rebel Yell officials responded by changing the voting procedure, and they say they stand by the results.

The prize, however, is not $1 million, but rather a free meal at a popular chain diner.

"It started out with dinner and a limo, and I think the prizes have really fallen by the wayside," Sisolak said. "Seriously though, it was really a lot of fun."