The pool of candidates for next year’s Student Association Senate is significantly larger than last year’s, as the campaign season for campus elections officially began Friday with the deadline for declaring candidacy.

Thirteen students are vying for four undergraduate seats in the Columbian School of Arts and Sciences, eight are running for two Elliott School of International Affairs undergraduate seats and six are in contention for two undergraduate at-large seats.

Joint Elections Committee Chair Terry Goddard said that while the number of CSAS candidates is not surprising, the fact that only three people are running for four seats on the Marvin Center Governing Board is. In addition, the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the law school are the only graduate senate seats with registered candidates.

“There are usually at least enough people running to cover every seat, but I suspect that there will be write-in candidates for most of them,” Goddard said.

A small pool of candidates will run for SA president and executive vice president.

Jason Ditzian, Patrick Macmanus, Carrie Potter and Sabina Siddiqui are registered presidential candidates.

Siddiqui said she is excited about the race and hopes the variety of candidates will increase voter turnout.

“It’s going to be an amazing race,” Siddiqui said. “I don’t recall there being a race with so many qualified candidates.”

Potter said having “outsiders” in the race is good for elections. She and Macmanus both serve as SA senators, while Siddiqui and Ditzian hold no SA positions.

“I’m glad to see more people getting involved and people from different aspects of campus life taking the initiative to run,” Potter said. “The variety of people running in this year’s elections is great.”

Macmanus said Siddiqui’s involvement with groups who do not traditionally vote will be an asset to this year’s elections.

“Sabina will bring something different to the campaign,” Macmanus said. “She brings the international, multicultural students that haven’t felt like they have been represented in the SA.”

Potter said she doesn’t expect the negativity usually associated with campaigns to be a factor this year.

“I have no intention of having anything negative come out of my campaign,” she said.

Ditzian was unavailable for comment.

Jason Haber and Jesse Strauss are the two registered candidates for EVP. Both currently are CSAS senators and have worked together on the SA’s student life committee. Early in the year, Haber had considered running for president, but decided during winter break to run for the EVP position instead.

“I looked at my goals and decided I could accomplish my goals more effectively in the EVP position than the presidency,” Haber said.

Strauss said the fact that he and Haber originally were going to run together will not affect the campaign.

“Jason and I are friends and we are both committed to running a civil race,” Strauss said.

Brian Nathanson and Michael Jewsbury are running for Program Board executive chair. For the second year in a row, the PB vice chair race is unopposed, with Mei-i Zien as the only registered candidate.