They Ran as a Joke. Then They Won. Meet 2 Student Leaders Who Shook Things Up in Texas.

When Xavier Rotnofsky and Rohit Mandalapu ran for president and vice president of the student body at the University of Texas’ flagship campus, they promised to increase transparency by requiring student leaders to wear only cellophane. The West Mall would be renamed the South Mall, and the library would close early to allow more time for partying.

They had serious goals, too — hauling a statue of Jefferson Davis off the campus was one of them. But like satire writers before them who lampooned student government through spoof campaigns, their candidacy was basically a joke.

Until they won.

Last week, as their improbable year in office officially ended, the two seniors sat down to reflect on a social-media campaign that had propelled them into offices where, at first, they had no clue how to govern. And how, once they figured it out, they actually got a lot of things done.

As editors of the university’s satirical online publication, the Texas Travesty, they’d had fun skewering student leaders and campus officials and putting a silly spin on the topics of the week. Inside a student-government campaign, they figured, could be a gold mine of new material.

“This seemed like a good chance to get our creative juices flowing,” Rohit said of the decision to run for the leadership positions at one of the nation’s largest public universities. “We thought it’d be funny.”

There was plenty of precedent. Every year since 2009, a pair from the Travesty has entered the race for student-body leader as a joke, tallying votes in the single digits.

Last year was different. Fueled by a witty social-media campaign and a widespread sentiment that student government had become elitist and ineffective, the Rotnofsky-Mandalapu campaign, known as Rotman, snagged 27 percent of the vote. That put them into a March runoff election, and panic set in.

“The last two days of the campaign, we didn’t even tell people to vote because we were scared we were going to win,” Rohit said.

In the runoff they captured 59 percent of the vote, and supporters hoisted Xavier into the air.

“When we won, it was a huge sense of ‘Oh my God — what did we get ourselves into?’” he said.

They did it, in part, through posts and videos that went viral on sites like Total Frat Move, and apps like Yik Yak, Grindr, and Tinder. The latter, perhaps best known as a tool for arranging no-strings hookups, has a feature that connects two people if they both swipe right on their screens.

Xavier and Rohit appointed a Tinder correspondent who responded to students who swiped right to bring issues to their attention. They also posted an attack ad against themselves on YouTube.

Is That a Joke?

Once in office, they kept their sense of humor as they tackled serious topics.

Among the accomplishments they’re most proud of, the duo led the effort to get the Jefferson Davis statue removed from a central location on the campus. That finally happened in August amid a national movement to sweep away relics of the Confederacy.

They also helped persuade the university to grant disciplinary amnesty to students who overdose on drugs, or those who report someone who has.

And they successfully pushed to cut in half the amount of money candidates could spend to win office. (Their campaign, they said, had spent a total of $80, which included the Lunchables that they had a butler serve candidates during a debate.)

Bouncing between substance and satire, they wrote an editorial against a campus-carry law that, starting on August 1, will allow guns in campus buildings. The law’s purpose, they wrote, “is to give college students the right to feel like they’re Clint Eastwood” when a bad guy pulls out a gun.

They wrote another editorial in favor of affirmative action, comparing diversity to a “delicious lasagna” that would be little more than a slab of soggy mozzarella without the perfect blend of cheeses, herbs, pasta, and meat.

They also conducted interviews with the university’s president, Gregory L. Fenves, who gamely discussed rock ’n’ roll, Kettle Chips, and the meaning of life.

A Democratic presidential candidate, the former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley, sat down with them before a campus speech for an interview that began with a kiss and gushing about his good looks.

So what do students think about the pair who promised to open up student government to regular folks and to bring fresh ideas to the table?

In an editorial shortly after they took office, the campus newspaper, The Daily Texan, complained that the duo wasn’t living up to its promise to shake things up, in part because the new officers had appointed a lot of Plan II honors majors like themselves to executive posts. Stacking student-government leadership with members of the highly selective interdisciplinary program was no more democratic, the editorial suggested, than filling it with leaders of Greek and spirit clubs, as previous presidents had done.

“If SG was exclusive before, now it is a downright private club,” the editorial said.

That prompted another student to leap to their defense. She wrote that the pair had “captured the voice and spirit of campus and indeed were swept into office, not as the masquerading revolutionaries the editorial board painted them as, but as two students that gained the confidence and trust of their peers against decades of precedent.”

Serious Moments

Being a campus leader has its somber moments, as well. After his interview with The Chronicle, Xavier had to prepare for a vigil for a freshman who had been murdered just days before. At that point, no one had been arrested, and the campus was beset, he said, with “a general state of anxiety.”

The two students helped organize additional volunteers who stepped up to offer safe walks home to worried students.

Sitting in his office, at a desk adorned with a bust of a fellow revolutionary, Mao Zedong, the student-body president described growing up in the border city of Laredo, Tex., the only Jewish kid in his Roman Catholic school. Xavier, who hopes to become a comedy writer after he graduates, in December, wears thick-rimmed black glasses with a mop of straight black hair and cheeks that flush easily.

“I’ve always been shy — the writer behind the scene — and once we won, I had to figure out how to come out of my shell,” he said.

“I was afraid that people would expect us to become these buttoned-up pseudo faux politicians, but those fears were unfounded,” he added. In the end, “we were elected because we were being ourselves.”

Xavier and Rohit plan one last attack ad that will highlight all the things they failed to accomplish. It might mention the demise last year of the university’s beloved longhorn mascot.

“Bevo,” it would say, “died on their watch.”

Katherine Mangan writes about community colleges, completion efforts, and job training, as well as other topics in daily news. Follow her on Twitter @KatherineMangan, or email her at katherine.mangan@chronicle.com.