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COLUMBIA SPECTATOR
by Josie Swindler
September 15, 2005
Mild-mannered Brian Corridan, CC ’05, has an alter ego—one that’s not afraid to lie, cheat, steal, or worse, break alliances. Much like Clark Kent darts into a telephone booth and emerges in yellow undies, Corridan rushed to Guatemala on a pretense last summer, donned his tribe’s colors, and pledged to use his Ivy League psychology degree to manipulate 15 other contestants in Survivor 11: Guatemala, The Maya Empire, which premiers tonight at 8 p.m. on CBS.
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CBS insists that contestants on the reality-TV kingpin not speak to the press about their experiences until they are voted off or ultimately win the game in broadcast time.
But if a person’s sheer devotion to Survivor can win the game for him, there will plenty of time for questions after Corridan collects a $1 million grand prize during the show’s live finale.
“[Being on Survivor] was a goal that he wasn’t going to let go of until the show stopped airing or he died,” described Corridan’s longtime friend and current roommate Greg O’Keeffe, SEAS ’05, now a graduate student in the Environmental Engineering Department. O’Keeffe likened Corridan’s appearance on Survivor to a little boy who grows up worshipping the Yankees and one day dons the famous pinstripes. “You can exaggerate that as much as you want to,” he said. “And you won’t be going overboard.”
As a Carman RA his junior and senior years, Corridan was known to commandeer the TV lounge on Thursday nights. “I remember Brian always talking about how he wanted to be on Survivor,” said Makini Byron, CC ’07, one of Corridan’s former Carman 7 residents. According to Byron, Corridan often told stories about his several audition tapes and an inspiring, but ultimately unsuccessful, call-back from the show’s executives.
“I don’t think there’s a bigger fan anywhere,” said Brian’s father, Kevin Corridan, the departmental administrator of the Electrical Engineering Department. The “obsessed” Brian had been telling his parents since the age of 17 that he would someday appear on the show. Kevin Corridan said that the family has been teasing Brian, now that his dream has come true at age 22. “Where do you go from there?” he asked. Brian actually hopes to get his doctorate and become a child psychologist—but a million dollars has a funny way of changing people’s plans.
On Corridan’s facebook profile, which hasn’t been updated since he traveled to Guatemala, his sole interest is: “Survivor, which I will one day win.”
A prerequisite for that win, a call to notify him that he had been selected as a contestant, came as Corridan was eating lunch with his family on Commencement Day. Since he could not reveal his selection, he told family members that he was going to South America with a friend and told friends that an uncle was financing a trip abroad. Corridan then put his job as a site director for TestTakers on hold and headed to Guatemala for more than a month to outwit, outplay, and outlast the other castaways.
But can a chronic overachiever—New Milford, Conn. high school valedictorian, Columbia Phi Beta Kappa—navigate the Guatemalan jungle as well as he did the New York concrete? The old saying, “If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere,” perhaps has never been so literally tested. Contestants in past Survivor tribes have killed wild boars, dropped dozens of pounds, and been “medevacced” to safety.
Byron predicts that Corridan, “a people person,” will be successful in Guatemala. “He can ease into any situation; he can be whatever he needs to be [to avoid being voted off].”
And being this season’s social chameleon seems to be Corridan’s best bet. “My background in psychology will allow me to pinpoint people’s insecurities and weaknesses and to manipulate them to my advantage,” Corridan says in his official biography on cbs.com. A true student of the game, Corridan also says that he’s written school papers on game strategies.
Kevin Corridan said that Brian wanted to keep his affiliation with Columbia a secret, to avoid becoming a target. A message board for fellow die-hard fans is already abuzz with accusations of snobbery.
“[Corridan’s] convinced they’re going to portray him as the Ivy League villain,” O’Keeffe said, adding that CBS has so much footage of each person that the editors can make anyone appear any way they want.
Susan Sacks, who taught Corridan when he was the only male in a 19-person adolescent psychology senior seminar, said, “[The editors, producers] would have to be really manipulative to make him mean or elitist.”
But Corridan’s not the only Ivy Leaguer on the show; 22-year-old Rafe, who plays the piano with his toes, attended Brown.
Sacks doesn’t think she’s ever seen Survivor; she wasn’t entirely sure which program it is. But she took up a pencil and scribbled down in her appointment book that this Thursday night she has a date with the television, a favorite former student, and his quest for his destiny. “He’s a survivor. I’m positive he’s a survivor,” she said.
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