USC in View: Skills Challenge Post-Game Review

There’s no better way to start your day than to see the University Students’ Council presidential candidates compete in silly, hilarious tasks. We had a lot of fun at the Gazette office as we put the contestants through seven grueling challenges. Let’s recap how they did.

The quiz

Winner: Jon Silver

The quiz was a hard one, which seems obvious in retrospect considering Silver won with only 58.7 per cent. Some of the surprises included Adam and Jon both getting the number of student senators wrong. My personal favourite part was that all but one candidate didn’t know the year the Gazette was founded, although in fairness it only appears on the front page of every issue.

Twitter contest

Winner: Adam Fearnall

Our social media throw-in, where the candidates had to tweet that they really wanted a coffee, and whoever was brought one first, won. A few fun facts here—Adam actually had two teas brought, proving that he has the loyalest band of Twitter followers. Logan was brought one after Adam, which would signify that she has the busiest followers. Jon’s followers apparently would do anything for him short of providing hot beverages, which is weird because I’ve seen his campaign manager serving him lunch on occasion. Claire chose to abstain from the contest, not wanting to impose on any of her followers. A bold strategy, but it really hurt her chances in this one.

Twister

Winner: All (so nobody)

I normally try to fill these blogs with criticism, but all the contestants impressed me here. The candidates really showed their flexibility, resourcefulness, interpersonal skills and perseverance on this challenge. Even when we told them to put one leg in the air, everybody stayed up, although Adam nearly went down after Claire “accidentally” kicked him in the chest. When it became clear that we were pushing our time limit, we called the contest a tie. In retrospect, we could have made it a more interesting contest by tying the contestants’ shoelaces together, or throwing things at them.

Flip cup (with water, of course…)

Winner: Jon Silver

A confidential source told me after the challenge the Jon Silver was taught his flip cup skills by the Social Science soph team. I suppose it would explain the talent I saw on display—pacing, smooth hands, graceful flips. I was impressed, although I’m fairly sure I could have taken him. Adam was fairly close to winning, but a last minute stumble meant Jon got his flip off first. Claire and Logan performed admirably, but were each only on their second cups by the time the contest ended.

Lettuce eating

Winner: Claire McArthur

No surprises here. Claire is legendary for her lettuce ingestion skills, so she had a natural advantage in this one. Whereas all the other candidates were on the verge of vomiting, Claire seemed to be enjoying herself. Adam looked lost, like he didn’t even know his way around a head of lettuce. Jon seemed distracted, probably figuring out how to get past this challenge and destroy the rest of the skills competition. Kudos to Logan for coming in a solid second place on this one—I wouldn’t have predicted she would do that well. I suppose she once again proved she’s more than “Little Logan.”

Super Smash Bros. (N64)

Winner: Jon Silver

The original plan was Mario Kart, but playing that game leads to levels of swearing that would be inappropriate to hear from presidential candidates. So we decided to go with the other game that defined the childhood of every ’90s kid. Jon’s Captain Falcon triumphed over Logan’s DK, Adam’s Yoshi and Claire’s Kirby. Adam seemed to be doing well to start, until he was eliminated first. After that, Jon seemed to be in total control, although that was to be expected when we had to explain the controls to Logan and Claire during the game.

Book search race

Winner: Jon Silver

We finished off with a good, old-fashioned rat race. The rules were fairly straightforward—each candidate got the title of a certain book in Weldon library, all of which were located on the fifth floor. The first one to find it, check it out and bring it to the Gazette office won. Although it was nice to see the candidates motivated to run hard, I had to follow Jon Silver, who “didn’t trust the elevators, only his legs” to get him up to the fifth floor first. I didn’t take this job to run up stairs. Despite my breathlessness, I managed to keep up with Lightning Legs and we arrived first at the Gazette office. Claire arrived soon after—I was told she and Adam were in a dead heat until Adam took a wrong turn. Happens to the best of us, I suppose, although I wonder why he didn’t simply follow her. Logan was unable to get her book, possibly because I chose one from the top shelf of the stack.

Overall Winner: Jon Silver

Congratulations to Jon for taking four of the seven contests. The other three performed well, and I’m still laughing every time I think of them playing Twister.