Alexandra Samuels

The University of Texas at Austin

At many universities, campus-wide campaigns take place each year to determine various student leadership roles. The mission of most university student governments is to act as a voice for the student body, an outlet for student concerns and to create innovative traditions for students.

But what if two jokesters ran for the student body president and vice-president positions and actually won?

Xavier Rotnofsky and Rohit Mandalapu are both students and The University of Texas at Austin and editors for the school’s satire magazine, The Texas Travesty. What started off as humorous stunt ended with them winning the offices of president and vice-president, respectively, for the 2015-2016 school year.

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“The election announcement will particularly stay in my mind for a while. I never expected us to win, but it happened,” Rotnofsky says.

Their platform included a promise to reduce the hours of campus study centers so students can spend less time studying and more time partying, in addition to more serious planks like addressing school diversity and getting rid of the Jefferson Davis status on campus.

“We thought that the school was in need of two good boys,” Mandalapu says. “People like satire. It's a fresh and funny to look at something that clearly has issues. We just pointed (the issues) out and people started getting on board.”

Each year, The Travesty puts forward two candidates reportedly as a joke to “lighten up the race, sort of just to make fun of it,” Rotnofsky says.

Mandalapu says he has no idea why this year’s campaign was more successful than past years. However, he says he thinks people are upset with student government so they latched on.

“The fact that we won shows the power of satire,” Rotnofsky says. “It also means that (students) want a change of pace in terms of leadership. They want something new.”

Although the campaign started as a joke, students quickly jumped on the bandwagon.

UT’s newspaper, The Daily Texanreports that the race between Rotnofsky-Mandalapu and opponents Braydon Jones and Kimia Dargahi generated 9,445 student votes, which beat last year’s election turnout by 1,300 votes.



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“This election makes me beyond proud to be a Longhorn,” says Mac McCann, junior at UT-Austin and Travesty staff writer. “This is the most legendary student government race since Paul Begala lost to a cartoon. It's just so inspiring -- ROTMAN's victory proves that with a sense of humor and an adorable smile you can truly change the world."

Mandalapu says social media played a big part in the victory.

The duo was featured on Total Frat Move and gained significant popularity from Tinder and the anonymous app, Yik-Yak, where students posted their opinions of the two candidates.

“So many people swiped right to join the dialogue,” Rotnofsky says.

Both say they’ve experienced some hate for winning but say that won’t stop them from maintaining the sense of humor that engaged so many students.

Michael Segovia, sophomore at UT, says the fact that Rotnofsky-Mandalapu won doesn’t bother him.

“I want to see a change in this heavily centered student government program at UT,” Segovia says. “I feel that once the students see that the presidency will not be that different from past years, it will make us aware of a more diverse selection of future candidates.”

Mandalapu says they plan to tie in their humor with some seriousness next year. They both say they plan on using their win to “become better boys.”

“Our humor is something we will never lose,” Mandalapu says. “You can definitely synthesize both and be successful.”



Alex Samuels is a student at the University of Texas at Austin and a spring 2015 USA TODAY Collegiate Correspondent.

This story originally appeared on the USA TODAY College blog, a news source produced for college students by student journalists. The blog closed in September of 2017.