TI's day trip to 'The Jerry Springer Show' reveals life outside the Orange Bubble

“He stopped and looked at me, stared at me for a while and pointed. I waved. And he said, ‘You. I love you.’ Then he made some bluntly sexual comment,” Tait said. “I’m pretty sure he’s in his 60s. It was awkward.”

Tait was attending a filming of The Jerry Springer Show in Stamford, Conn. with about 70 other Tiger Inn members on Monday afternoon. Former TI social chair James Smits ’12 said he had been planning the event for months ever since former TI president Juan Michael Portillo ’11 told him about how much he had enjoyed attending the show live when he went with a few friends.

Smits said he originally thought he would try to visit the show with just a small group of friends, but once he realized the tickets were free, he began to consider organizing a club-wide event.

Knowing that the members of TI would enjoy going to the set together, Smits began speaking with the show about organizing a large-scale trip. Since shows like these are looking for a rowdy audience, Smits said, they enjoy having college students attend to help create the kind of environment they are looking for.

“I can’t think of a group I would rather have gone to a Jerry Springer show or any other rowdy event with,” Tait said, who added that TI members made up about half the crowd.

When Smits sent out an email to the club to gauge interest, he initially received about 100 names. He was unsure how many would actually show up, but said he was thrilled with the eventual turnout.

Smits arranged for the show to send buses to pick up and drop off the members at the club, all free of charge. When the group arrived at the show, they spent an hour at the set before Springer himself arrived. As they waited, they listened to staff members try to warm up the crowd and watched old video clips of previous fights that had taken place on the show.

When Springer arrived, he performed a stand-up routine for the crowd for about an hour before beginning the show. Tait said it was interesting to see how much happened at the show that was ultimately not aired on television, such as the occasional inappropriate joke he told the crowd before filming began. Despite her awkward interaction with Springer — whom she noted is old enough to be her grandfather — Tait said it was fun to see the show live and chant “Jerry,” which she said is “definitely not something you do at home while watching on TV.”

Though many attendees missed classes in order to go see the show, Smits said it was an eye-opening experience to see how some people lived well outside of the Orange Bubble.

“While this has no academic benefit and it’s not a field trip in that sense, it was still very educational in the sense that there’s a large part of the world that we as Princeton students are not going to interact with,” Smits said. “The people on Jerry Springer are kind of the opposite 1 percent.”

At the beginning of the show, there was a question-and-answer session during which members of the audience had a chance to ask questions to the host. Smits said he asked Springer a question, noting that he was impressed by the number of people that Springer has interviewed over the years.

“All said and done, he’s interviewed 40,000 people,” Smits said. “There are 40,000 ridiculous people out there who are willing to go out there in front of America and fight each other and talk about their private lives in a really public way.”