UPDATED: Nov. 18, 2013 at 1:10 a.m.

By a 196-vote margin, Boris Gresely has been elected Student Association president for the 58th Session. It’s a position he will hold for a year and half because of code changes the student body also approved.

“I can’t believe it’s happened,” Gresely said in an interview after the results were announced. “It’s a shocking moment — it’s a surprise moment. I’ve been waiting for this for so long, and finally, it’s here.”

With 1,764 votes — or about 40 percent — Gresely and his running mate Daniela Lopez beat out two other candidates. Duane Ford and Nia Boles came in second with 1,568 votes, and Ivan Rosales and Simone Goldslager came in last with 896. There were 107 write-in votes.

The 4,411 total votes cast is equivalent to a 31 percent turnout of the student body. This percentage surpasses the previous record, which was set last year.

Gresely, a junior political science and policy studies major, announced his candidacy Sept. 23 and ran on the three-part platform of “reform, reconnect and redirect.” He promised, if elected, to make SA more accountable.

His Thursday started out with praying in Hendricks Chapel and ended with him and about 10 supporters learning their campaign had been successful in a friend’s Copper Beech Commons apartment.

Though, technically, they weren’t there when the polls closed at 11:59 p.m. That’s because they were still out campaigning, finishing up at Boland, Brewster and Brockway halls just nine minutes prior.

He got the call telling him he’d won at 12:33 a.m. Friday on Lopez’s phone. (His had been dead for hours.) Paulina Colon, a member on the Board of Elections and Membership, asked him to check if Lopez could help her with homework for PAF 101: “An Introduction to the Analysis of Public Policy.”

“Oh my God, stop,” someone in the room mumbled.

“Tell her to stop f*cking around,” another one of his supporters yelled out with a nervous laugh.

The ruse kept going: “Who’s going to call us?” Gresely asked.

After a while, his supporters didn’t know how to react. But after a few more minutes, Gresely learned it was the call.

“Paulina, what are you trying to tell me right now?” Gresely said. “We won?” The room, for a moment, was absolutely silent. That’s until he repeated himself:

“We won!”

His supporters screamed. They immediately jumped up and hugged one another. The noise was so loud that apartment security kicked everyone out.

The atmosphere in the living room was a drastically different a half hour before.

The mood was somber and tense. His supporters — several wearing orange “Ask Me About Boris & Daniela” shirts — gathered in the apartment’s small, beige living room. Many stared at the ground, anxiously playing with their hands. “I literally can’t feel my legs I’m so nervous,” someone said shortly after they settled in.

First, Gresely gave a quick speech thanking all his supporters for all of their hard work. Then he asked each of them to reflect about the campaign.

Iggy Nava spoke last and for the longest — almost five minutes off the cuff. He unsuccessfully ran for SA president last year and Gresely served as his campaign manager.

Nava, a former columnist for The Daily Orange, said that after he lost last year, he felt defeated. He and Gresely drifted apart, though later grew close as friends again.

Throughout Nava’s speech, Gresely, who wore one of his campaign shirts over a blue plaid shirt with rolled-up sleeves, looked down at the floor and smiled. Nava’s voice progressively became softer as he continued talking.

“You guys have rekindled in me something that I lost a while ago,” Nava told the crowd. “Which is the desire to want to make a change.”

After the initial excitement of the results died down, Gresely walked over to Nava. They embraced, and Gresely was pulled down to a knee in the moment.

All of their work had paid off.

Published on November 15, 2013 at 1:27 am

Contact Dylan: dmsegelb@syr.edu | @dylan_segelbaum