Dumping a bag of rice in the fire usually does not get a player far in the CBS television show “Survivor.” That is what J’Tia Taylor did in last week’s episode, but she is not gone yet. She managed to survive the tribal council, where the contestants decide who among them will be sent home.

The other catch about Taylor? She earned her doctorate in nuclear engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She made sure everyone on her tribe knew it, too.

When I heard that Taylor attended Illinois, I cringed. Her performance on “Survivor” does not reflect well on the University. It made me wonder, does Taylor represent the type of people who come out of the University?

The problem is that she is representing the University on national television in a negative way. It is important she represent what I consider the values of an Illinois graduate: teamwork and logic.

While Taylor did represent those values while a student at the University, she has yet to show she embraces those values on the show.

On the Illinois Department of Nuclear, Plasma and Radiological Engineering website, NPRE Illinois head James F. Stubbins said, “We are proud of the accomplishments of our faculty and alumni in the past 50 years, and we look forward to continuing this leadership with new students and new ideas in the next 50 years.” Illinois graduates learn and work with each other long after their time on campus.

Illinois emphasizes networking and working together through research. It is impossible to earn a degree without the help of someone else at the University; students need the help of professors, counselors and peers. A University as large as Illinois revolves around the idea of teamwork and collaboration.

Taylor’s time at Illinois reflects those ideas. According to the American Nuclear Society blog “ANS Nuclear Café,” Taylor “was the first black female to successfully defend and receive a Ph.D. from the department.” She is a trailblazer for women in nuclear engineering. That does not show selfishness.

Even Taylor’s dissertation emphasizes teamwork across international borders. Her thesis “aims to develop methodologies and employ and expand on existing sources to develop a multipurpose tool to analyze international nuclear fuel supply options.” She is not focusing on herself or America alone. She is worried about nuclear options across the globe. That is a lofty goal, and it is certainly not a selfish goal.

But from the first episode of “Survivor,” we can see that Taylor clearly hasn’t carried over those values from the University to the show.

This season divided cast mates into three tribes: Brawns, brains and beauty. Taylor was put in the brains tribe.

For a tribe based on intelligence, the brains are not doing very well, and neither is Taylor. She racked up a lot of reasons to be unsure of the success of an Illinois graduate.

She disappointed her team in challenges, keeping them from winning immunity. She talked up her engineer expertise and took control of building her tribe’s shelter, which quickly collapsed. She did not know how to work with her resources and with her peers. These are values Illinois takes pride in, as it is one of the top engineering schools in the nation. Engineers do not work alone; they work in teams.

Building a shelter requires logic and physics. While her tribe worked, she stood around, giving orders. She was not getting her hands dirty and cutting the materials. She was not being a team player, again going against what Illinois taught her. She was not working as a team, solving problems like an engineer should do.

I thought Taylor would definitely be voted out of her tribe after the rice incident, but she wasn’t. What saved her was that another tribe mate revealed secret alliances, causing him to be voted out. She was lucky she was given another chance to prove she demonstrates the values of the University while on the show.

Do not be fooled by Taylor’s less than favorable actions in the first two episodes of “Survivor.” So far, she has not acted in line with the values of a University graduate, but she’s still an active contestant on the show. Hopefully she will take this opportunity to show America what Illinois graduates can offer, just as she portrayed in her time as a student.

Rebecca is a junior in Media. She can be reached at [email protected].