But others disagree.
“It’s never been a problem, and most people didn’t even know they were going out,” says FiCom member Adeyemi K. Owolewa ’07.
Nicolais dismisses concerns about what happens if Bill and Hillary break up.
“Short of Samita killing me and becoming UC president, or us having joint custody of the council?” Nicolais says, laughing. “Here’s the thing: we are absolutely committed to our vision, and it is too important for us to let anything get in the way.”
THE KEY TO THE TICKET
While they have only been dating a few months, Nicolais and Mannapperuma met as high school juniors.
As a senior in high school, Nicolais served as international president of Key Club, a 230,000 member high school service organization and the largest in the world.
“Everyone in the world knew who he was,” she says.
Mannapperuma, who was born in Sri Lanka, also participated in community service in her home state of California. But her passion for business brought her 3,000 miles away.
An economics concentrator, she hopes to one day be the president of a professional football team. She says that her favorite College class dealt with the business of sports.
“It was a dream come true,” she says of the class. “We were able to just study things like the salary cap and collective bargaining.”
And what about the seemingly unpronounceable last name?
“It’s actually really phonetic, but people look at it and get scared to pronounce it,” she says. “It’s all the double letters that scare people away.”
A DIVERSE TICKET
The candidates recognize that the council is not a microcosm of the student population. There is only one woman on the eight-member executive board.
“The UC is a male-dominated organization, there’s no doubt about it,” Nicolais says. “We’re trying to tell students that we represent them with seven white guys.”
The candidates hope that their unique position to represent their constituents will afford them an advantage over their opponents.
“Half the people who go to this school are women,” says Mannapperuma. And then, smiling, “Not to say that Teo doesn’t know about girls.”