Ryan Sustacek barely set down his suitcases in his new dorm room before launching his campaign for freshman class president.
Sustacek, a first-year student at St. Thomas, beat out four other candidates on Sept. 15 to win the position by a ten-point margin. He quickly set up a far-reaching campaign, creating advertisements that were designed to relate to students’ comedic senses over every platform possible.
“I put myself in the voter’s shoes and said, if I’m reading something, I don’t want to read some boring political propaganda that may or may not be followed through on,” Sustacek said, referring to his biography posted on the ‘Meet the candidates’ website. “I want to read something from someone that’s just like me.”
The biography, which included content like “I will build a website & St. John’s will pay for it (lol jk),” was just one of the ways Sustacek promoted his self-described “relatable” campaign. He also advertised through electronic ads, a Disney-themed sign in the Anderson Student Center, chalk drawings on campus sidewalks and social media posts.
Sustacek said his campaign staff of friends, who “knew how I work,” helped him quickly accomplish everything before ballots were emailed to students– exactly one week after classes began.
“Once I knew that I wanted to run, it became more of a ‘me against the clock’ type of thing,” Sustacek said. “I had a group of friends that went to high school with me… and we really hit the ground running from there.”
“They helped me campaign,” Sustacek continued. “We got posters up, I met people, and I felt like the ideas that we came up with were very relatable to people.”
One widely-circulated electronic ad, which appeared on TVs across campus, featured bright red X’s over pictures of presidential nominees Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. A photo of Sustacek was featured prominently between the two presidential candidates, with the implicit suggestion to vote for Sustacek over Trump or Clinton.
“I’m going to provide a third option,” Sustacek said he reasoned. “I was just appealing to the crowd and saying, ‘Here I am. I’m here to work with you.’”
While many of Sustacek’s ads used comedy to catch students’ attention, now that he is officially class president, he said he’s buckling down to follow through on his campaign promises.
He will, for example, create a page on the Undergraduate Student Government website for first-year students to provide feedback and take polls on what issues matter most, but he won’t make St. John’s pay for it, of course.
“Not to say that my campaign is going to be a joke,” Sustacek said. “I’m going to take it very seriously.”
Sophie Carson can be reached at sophia.carson@stthomas.edu.