Decked out in a dark suit, dress shoes and red tie, Weinbergfreshman Prajwal Ciryam resembled the quintessentialpolitician.
But he insisted he wasn’t nearly as confident as he looked.
“I’m honestly scared to death,” he said 15 minutes beforeelection polls closed Thursday night. “Your hopes really get uponce you make it to the runoff. Losing to no confidence would be amuch greater shame than losing to a good candidate.”
Ciryam had no reason to worry. The academic vice presidentialcandidate emerged victorious in Thursday’s runoff election. Ciryamreceived 64.3 percent of the votes as the no confidence optiongarnered 35.7 percent. When all the votes were counted, Ciryamreceived more votes in his favor than any other candidate.
Thursday’s runoff election in the race took place because nocandidate received a majority of the votes in Tuesday’s generalelection, when Ciryam received 45.7 percent of the votes, noconfidence garnered 20.3 percent and Weinberg freshman DanielBroadwell received 19.7 percent of the votes.
Ciryam said Thursday that he did relatively little campaigningafter the initial election.
“I had a chem quiz I had to study for,” he said. “That had totake precedence for once. If I want to be academic vice president,I can’t fail out.”
But Ciryam said he did take the time to contact organizationsthat endorsed him earlier.
“I was basically trying to get people who voted for me last timeto vote for me again this time,” he said.
At 7:45 p.m., he was at Public Affairs Residential College,snacking on Sbarro pizza and shooting pool in the lounge with somefriends.
He seemed absent-minded, knocking the cue ball in the pocket acouple times. With four solids and one striped ball left on thetable, he scratched.
“This game is a symbol of what’s gonna happen,” he shook hishead. “No confidence is solids and I’m stripes.”
At 8:10 p.m., ten minutes after the polls closed, he decided totry the Associated Student Government office, but his call wasn’twell received.
“ASG — No, I’m not going to tell you,” someone answered thephone.
“Ouch, harsh,” he laughed, hanging up the phone. “I think it wasMatt Hall.”
Ciryam’s cell phone rang several times during the next hour, butnone of the calls was from ASG.
He eventually learned the results of the election when PARCsenator David Kim rushed into the building at 9:05 p.m. with aprinted sheet of the results.
“Congrats,” Kim said, holding up the paper.
Ciryam grabbed the paper, smiled and hugged Kim, a Weinbergfreshman. Kim didn’t realize that Ciryam hadn’t heard the resultsyet.
“(The Election Commission) didn’t call you?” Kim asked, asCiryam shook his head.
After calling the office to receive official confirmation,Ciryam called his dad to let him know the results.
Ciryam said he attributed his win to “a really great campaignstaff that did a whole hell of a lot to help me win.”
He also said he is looking forward to working with formeropponent Broadwell.
“Dan was a really great candidate,” he said. “I’m very, veryglad that he’s going to be continuing working on the committee andworking on target P/N because he’s done an awesome job.”
Ciryam said he plans to rely on outgoing academic vice presidentTamara Kagel for “lots of advice.”
“I’d like to let everyone continue to work on their projectsthey’re working on now and slowly transition in some new ideas asthe quarter goes on,” he said.
As for a celebratory bash, Ciryam wasn’t sure of any immediateplans.
“My campaign manager Sriram (Rangarajan) wants us to go’partying,'” he laughed, “but that’s a new phrase for both of us, Ithink.”
