What started as a Monday night bonding activity four years ago among fourth floor McShain residents has become a full-blown club on campus: The Tuesday Rose Club.
The Tuesday Rose Club is a watch party club for the popular reality TV show “The Bachelor,” where a group of women compete for a relationship with a single man.
Throughout the season, women are eliminated as the bachelor gets closer to finding his wife. If a contestant is given a rose by the bachelor, they get to stay in the contest. If they do not receive a rose, they go home.
Billy Bruno ’22 and Joey Gaus ’22 are the founders of this new club on campus. During their first year in college, the two friends started analyzing the results of the show every Tuesday after episodes aired.
Gaus said someone on their residence hall floor initially brought up watching the show with a big group of guys as a joke. But Bruno said they started rooting for different contestants and betting on who would be eliminated, calling it a “fantasy bachelor” game.
“We got hooked. There’s so much drama involved, it’s kind of funny. It’s a little guilty pleasure, if you will,” Gaus said.
Ted Chesson ’22, a friend of Gaus and Bruno, and member of The Tuesday Rose Club executive board, said the drama is what they all love the most in the show.
“We call our club the worst kept secret on campus because there’s so much drama,” Chesson said.
When Gaus and Bruno would discuss the show in public, Bruno said the people around them would seem a bit shocked.
“They were kind of surprised that a group of guys would watch ‘The Bachelor.’ So, that was funny for us. We do enjoy it,” Bruno said.
During the initial outbreak of covid-19, Gaus and Bruno decided to take their Tuesday analyses of the prime-time TV show and turn them into a podcast. While the podcast was a big hit for a while among listeners, this year, Bruno said they wanted to take their passion for “The Bachelor” to another level by turning their group activity into a club open to all St. Joe’s students.
“I just wanted to heighten the experience because I know a lot of people already watch the shows. But I think if you watch with a lot of other people, and then discuss during commercials and all just share the experience, that will be really enjoyable,” Bruno said. “I’ve watched it with the same group for the last few years and we enjoyed it, but I know so many other different groups enjoy it as well.”
Although “The Bachelor” does not officially air until January 2022, The Tuesday Rose Club held their first meeting on Sept. 22 to watch an episode of “Bachelor in Paradise,” a show within “The Bachelor” franchise where former contestants from “The Bachelor” and “The Bachelorette” get a chance to recompete.
Aydin Godlewski ’22 went to the club’s first meeting last week and said she thought it was a fun experience that allowed everyone to simply hang out with one another and enjoy the show.
“It felt very welcoming. There’s no pressure to say something if you don’t want to,” Godlewski said. “If you wanted to just sit there and watch it, you could just sit there and watch it. If you wanted to sit there and talk to people about it and make guesses on what you thought was gonna happen, you could without anyone giving you a hard time.”
Moving forward, Gaus said the club intends to host bigger watch parties throughout the year and to continue developing the club as something fun for everyone to participate in.
“We want the club to really be an environment where everybody can come together, watch the episodes together, talk about it and just have some fun,” Gaus said. “Our goal was to be one of the biggest clubs on campus and I think that we definitely could do that.”
