Roommates get rich quick through game show
By Sofia Santiago
THE audience cheered as an energetic host walked onto the Cavalla Room stage to ask, “Any broke roommates in the crowd tonight?”
On Nov. 2, the Student Entertainment Council hosted its second game show of the semester, “The Roommate Game Show.” This is the first time the event has taken place.
Senior communications major Nick Witkowski, game show and comedy coordinator of the SEC, explained why these new events were different compared to previous years: “I decided to change it up a little bit. During the summer, I put a poll out on the Rider SEC Instagram asking people what they would want to see the most … the dating show was the most popular, so I did that one first. The roommate game came in second.”
The stage setup for the game included a center divider with four chairs on each side. Pairs of roommates sat on either side of the divider and wrote their answers to questions about each other on white boards to earn points for matching answers.
The audience was also involved in whether or not the answers were valid enough. The questions varied from “What size shoe does your roommate wear?” to “Which movie title best describes your roommates’ love life: ‘Psycho,’ ‘The 40-Year-Old Virgin,’ ‘The Proposal’ or ‘Friends with Benefits’?”
The main game went on for three rounds, each with a $40 prize for the winning pair. Then followed a lightning round that consisted only of “who is most likely to …” questions. There were also two mini games with $20 prizes for any audience participants.
Freshman arts and entertainment industries management major Try Quain and roommate freshman vocal performance major Briseis Muñoz participated in the game after hearing about it on Instagram. Even though they have only known each other for a few months, they won a prize, admitting the hardest question was “Who’s concert would your roommate most want to attend?”
Senior arts and music major Jessica Koscak and her roommate of four years, senior sociology major Jennie Mae Sprouse, heard about the event through an SEC email.
Sprouse said, “We don’t get to actively see how much we know about each other from these past four years, so it was a chance to show how much we’ve been listening to each other.”
Despite tough questions about roommate attire, the pair took home one of the prizes.
Witkowski described the process of bringing the different game shows to campus: “Neon Entertainment is an entertainment company we work with to get the events happening … I went on their website and looked for what I think the students would be most interested in and what would bring people together the most and what would be the most open for the broader Rider community.”
He shared future plans for possible comedy and game shows such as “Trivia and Cash Attack,” similar to “Deal or No Deal,” for students to participate in.
“There is a lot more that Rider has to offer, some of these on campus events that maybe aren’t as well recognized … can actually be really fun and a good experience if you can get your friends out and just enjoy it … and you can win money so that’s pretty cool.”
