This year’s batch of Student Body President candidates is taking a conscious step toward combating stereotypes. Despite the commonly held conception that it takes an exceptionally unrealistic, narcissistic and delusions of grandeur-plagued person to pursue this office, none of the candidates have succumbed to the recent Facebook doppelgänger trend.

Over the past week, thousands of teenagers and young adults all over Facebook have changed their profile pictures to photos of celebrities who are inevitably far better looking than they are. Tragically, the chosen celebrity often bears no resemblance to the awkward college student.

At the moment, all six SBP candidates have official campaign photos as their Facebook defaults. Many of these photos feature slogans, color alterations and considerable Photoshopping.

Undoctored and unflattering photos of the candidates can be found on the Daily Tar Heel website.

“I mean, it just doesn’t do anything for someone’s image to point out how much hotter, say, Jake Gyllenhaal is,” said one campaign manager who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “We’re all about highlighting the positives and sweeping the negatives under the rug.”

Daily Tar Hole investigative reporters took the liberty of Facebook stalking the candidates to see what kinds of photos were featured on their profiles. We submitted several of these travel snapshots, contrived campaign photos and cRaAAZay pArTay piXxXxxxx to FaceDouble.com, a website designed to help desperate nineteen-year-old girls find prettier versions of themselves.  Here’s what we got:

Joe Levin-Manning had the funniest result, hands down. According to the magical doppelgänger generator, he is a dead-ringer for none other than Sarah Michelle Gellar of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Cruel Intentions fame.

Greg Strompolos bears an uncanny resemblance to one of our heroes, comedian Sarah Silverman. Too bad his witticisms at the forums aren’t quite up to her level yet. Actually, it’s probably a good thing that they aren’t because we were already peeing our pants listening to Nash Keune talk about invading Iran with narwhals.

When we fed it Shruti Shah’s picture, the face recognition software came up with some random hair gel victim who was a child actor in Road to Perdition. Maybe he has both Indian and Jewish heritage too? Or maybe we accidentally uploaded Greg Strompolos’ picture.

Given the small African child Hogan Medlin was clutching in his old default, we expected to get either Brangelina or Madonna. But his doppelgänger (other than Roy Williams, as his “Photo Gallery” would suggest) is the fabulous Miss Britney Spears!  (Disclaimer: that caption came with the picture.  Since when is Britney Spears an author? For that matter, since when is she literate?)

FaceDouble.com thinks Monique Hardin could pass for John Krasinksi. We think Jim would approve of Office (ha, ha) hours in the Pit, too.

Though we were hoping for Tilda Swinton à la The Chronicles of Narnia, Nash Keune’s face proved to be quite the doozie for FaceDouble.com. There were no matches! This only seemed appropriate for this year’s most “atypical” candidate. (You have mastered the art of understatement, haven’t you, Daily Tar Heel? Or maybe you’re immune to satire?)

By some lucky accident, however, Nash’s Facebook picture reminded us of another celebrity, er, politician. It took us a while to put our finger on it, since the resemblance was really subtle, but we finally realized that his picture looked a lot like those posters Barack Obama had two years ago. What a coinkydink!

And last, but not least, don’t think we’ve forgotten about you, DTH staff! In our Facebook stalking of past and present SBP candidates, we came across evidence that two high-level editors had broken their own rules of not fraternizing (i.e., appearing in Facebook pictures) with candidates. Below is a picture of Editor-in-chief Andrew Dunn, Managing Editor for Online Sara Gregory and 2009 SBP candidate Ron “Take Down the Terminator” Bilbao. If this isn’t fraternizing, then we don’t know what is. According to an email sent to DTH staffers, any reporter caught committing such an egregious transgression would be off the paper!!!

In case you didn't know, they are dating. (see 4/3/2009 entry)

Since the President and Vice President are clearly unfit to lead, what is the DTH’s equivalent to Speaker of the House? Would FaceDouble.com come up with Nancy Pelosi if we put in University Desk Co-Editor Kevin Kiley’s photo?

Until next time, keep it real, DTHolers. Friend us on Facebook (our doppelgänger is a striped possum). And, if you’re interested in narwhals or enjoy Noam Chomsky, check out Nash Keune’s 680-page platform.

P.S. And now we’re going to play…find that kindergarten error in the DTH. At some point over the last five days or so, the copy editors at the Daily Tar Heel demonstrated that they don’t know the difference between “effect” and “affect.” First person to spot it and email us wins a prize!