Competing campaigns unravel

Fallout over shot glass giveaway in Pitt dorms ends in student election surprise: An underdog winner

The next student government president at the University of Pittsburgh won’t be from a slate of candidates who doled out shot glasses to dorm students as a campaign ploy.

Neither, it turns out, will it be the leader of a rival ticket whose complaint about those shot glasses led to that slate’s eleventhhour disqualification.

Harshitha Ramanan, a third presidential candidate, emerged as the clear winner in voting Tuesday. Considered an underdog, she garnered 3,013 votes, or 63% of ballots cast, versus 1,791 or 37% for Tyler Viljaste, presidential candidate with the rival Brightside slate.

Call it the act of a fickle electorate. Or think of it as karma.

Either way, the numbers she put up amounted to a landslide in an election that some Student Government Board members might just as soon forget, given last-minute charges and countercharges in an already contentious race.

Ms. Ramanan, 18, a sophomore neuroscience major from Austin, Texas, ran as an independent candidate for the undergraduate position at an institution with 34,000 students, most of them on the Oakland campus. There is a separate body for graduate students.

“My reaction is honestly surprised,” she said by email Wednesday. “The third party almost never gets voted in and I am extremely glad and grateful that my peers elected me to represent them. I hope I can make Pitt feel like home for every student.”

Ms. Ramanan attended high school in Pleasanton, Calif., before her parents moved to Texas. She said she has also lived in India, Dubai, Bahrain and England.

“I love this school but it still has a long way to go to truly represent the student body’s wants and needs,” she said on her candidate page, explaining her run.

Candidates on the Vision slate — headed by presidential candidate Joseph Landsittel — distributed the shot glasses with Hershey’s Kisses to residence hall students, including those in Sutherland Hall, apparently viewing it as a shrewd campaign strategy.

“The glasses had the text ‘… now I’m seeing double …’ above our slate name, ‘Vision’ and logo,” explained Daniel Rudy, one of the Vision candidates.

But a complaint lodged by Mr. Viljaste with the SGB’s elections committee asserted that the shot glass distribution ran afoul of campus rules banning alcohol paraphernalia.

Vision slate members contended that they were wrongly accused, and that they had received an assurance from the administration that there was no violation.

On Tuesday — hours after being disqualified and with the voting underway — Mr. Rudy said his slate had thrown its support behind Ms. Ramanan’s candidacy. Ms. Ramanan had no comment on that.

But the losing slate was not shy, likening the backlash it faced to “a mob.”

Late Wednesday, Mr. Viljaste sent the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette a statement he said is attributable to the Brightside slate and written on his behalf. It said Brightside candidates were not responsible for the decision to disqualify Vision, but were targeted for unfair attacks.

“Everyone who participated in yesterday’s smear campaign should recognize the gravity of their efforts grounded in hate towards me and my slate,” the statement read in part. “Recognize that Vision instigated a mob of students who echoed and amplified negativity and hate to the point where my mental health, coupled with my personal safety, put my life and livelihood in danger.”

The campaign that Ms. Ramanan and the other candidates waged explored weighty subjects such as campus inclusion and diversity, how student funds are allocated and the value of government experience versus having an outside perspective.

But it was the allegation regarding the shot glasses that roiled the campaign’s final hours.

Ms. Ramanan will succeed Eric Macadangdang, who is a senior, for the upcoming 202122 academic year.

Mr. Macadangdang said the committees that oversaw the election complaint operated separately from the board for purposes of adjudicating the shot glass complaint. He said the issues that arose between the slates will be reviewed.

“There is a number of areas that we are looking to follow up on,” he said Wednesday. “We have an established process in place to review and propose revisions to the Elections Code.”