He likes wearing a bandana—presumably to keep the sun off his bald pate—and when he's playful (which seems to be more often than not), he absolutely loves a good game of hide-and-seek. But perhaps what's most endearing about Wattson, a toy skull swiftly advancing an odd breed of campus-celebrity, is the way he—or rather it—has scared up interest in energy conservation. Wattson hiding in the flowers. Wattson peeking between pillars in Badgley Garden. Wattson scaling fences. Every little snapshot of Wattson, as posted on the Administrative Services Web site, has become synonymous with saving power.

It all started in May, when Administrative Services Director Tim Lopez was documenting dorm damage with a video crew. Among the legions of abandoned toaster ovens, end tables and threadbare sofas left by students was a toy skull and a pair of tiki lights. Lopez drove the skull back to the office, presumably with the notion that this weird trinket might get a laugh or two. But back in the department, a light bulb went off when employees got a look at Lopez's booty.

Talk of thinning energy demands over the summer had already seeded the idea of a friendly in-house conservation competition. But with this new skull in the mix, well, it was just too perfect. Mailroom supervisor Lynn Price and maintenance coordinator Penny Drury used CBS's popular Survivor series to cook up a tempting recipe for campus break: Survivor, The Claremont McKenna Challenge.

Instead of the motto, "Outwit, Outplay, Outlast," CMC would adopt, "Reduce, Conserve, Outlast." Staffs from different departments would be split into "tribes" and, on a voluntary basis, asked to share their creative juice-saving ideas with one another. But the winning ingredient would be mascot Wattson, as the cuddly host of numerous Survivor "challenges." In this case, players logging on to the Survivor Web site have to eyeball photographs taken of the skull around campus, then be among the first to correctly guess his whereabouts. Winners get "luxury items," which thus far have included frozen yogurt gift certificates, light bulbs, and gummy worms.

"She has a great sense of humor, and is trying to gear all of (the prizes) to either the Survivor theme, or to electricity or heat," Price says of Drury, who shops for the prizes. Adds Drury, "We had no idea if Survivor would catch on. If not, we'd have just used it in our department, because there are a lot of people within Administrative Services that can affect power consumption."

In a month's time, Wattson has done for kilowatt awareness what the chihuahua did for fast food. When the first challenge was unleashed, nine players tried to guess Wattson's whereabouts . By challenge No. 3, participation exceeded 30 people, and 16 of the 20 designated tribes had taken the initiative to name their teams, leaders and their themes, Price says. In fact with each anticipated challenge, Survivor becomes a regular topic of conversation at the water cooler, and high turnout out at a recent Survivor-sponsored employee luncheon (with some tribes in costume) is a sign that the game is doing what it's supposed to. "We're just trying to make this summer more bearable by using a little humor and a lot of fun," Price says.

Lopez says Southern California Edison is "offering us a 20 percent reduction on our monthly invoice for any month—June, July, August, and September—that we consume 20 percent less electricity than the same month last year.

"This will help to pay for the generators, which are costing CMC about $35,000 a month for our portion of the expense," Lopez says.The bad news is that, no matter what, the College will spend more this year on electricity than ever before, partly because of fines imposed to keep power on in December and January. Lopez says the College spent $416,595 for electricity last year. This year—through April—"we have already spent $420,000," he says. That figure, however, does not include the monthly expense of generators, or the fines paid to SCE over winter.

Next up: A fund-raising Survivor car wash?

Energy conservation's unlikely new hero, Wattson.