Election season is officially underway at Penn State as the list of candidates running for a spot in our student government was released this morning.

Despite seven presidential registration packets being signed out, as we reported last week, there will be just three candidates running for UPUA’s top spot in the 9th Assembly. Nevertheless, 2014 is a much more competitive race than that of 2013, which featured the Mullen-Dooley ticket running unopposed.

The presidential race will include two familiar faces to UPUA aficionados along with one newcomer. Anand Ganjam, the Smeal Representative and Student Life chair, will lead one ticket with Diversity Chair Emily McDonald as his running mate.

Melissa McCleery will head another presidential ticket, as the Liberal Arts Representative and Academic Affairs Chair looks to take her talents to the head of the organization. McCleery will run alongside Eberly Representative Tim Rinehart in the election.

The third and final candidate running for president is UPUA outsider Meeten Doshi, although he does hold another significant position — President of the Blue & White Society. Doshi’s ticket is rounded out by current On-Campus Representative Kate Taylor.

The ballot for the General Assembly also came out this morning. This is the first year that the Assembly will not be divided by on or off campus constituencies. Instead, the top 20 At Large candidates will take office, along with one each from the Academic Colleges (students can only vote for up to 10 At Large candidates and for the college of which they are a member). The At Large race looks to be fairly competitive, with 29 candidates vying for 20 seats. Some Academic College races are competitive and some aren’t, but students can always consider a write-in campaign to fill those seats.

Here are the rest of the candidates running for student government this year:

AT LARGE
Divy Agnihotri
Majed Alheraiqi
Nicholas Azinge
Steffen Blanco
Aaron Budd
Alex Calderaro
Malik Cooper
Terry Ford
Jon Garfield
Denis Harp
Nicole Keller
Anjali Krishnan
John Lombardo
Zach Longstreth
Yanni Mai
Bradley Marks
Melissa McCleery (Cross-filed)
Meghan O’Brien
Steven Parr
Stephen Payne
Shannon Rafferty
Ted Ritsick
Nick Rockwell
Eyad Saifaddin
Greg Schlosser
Katie Tully
Ebony Turner
Garret Warmbein
John Wortman

ACADEMIC COLLEGES

Agricultural Science
Open

Arts and Architecture
Open

Communications
Ryan Belz
Chris Bizzell

Division of Undergraduate Studies
Bennett Samuel

Earth and Mineral Sciences
Open

Eberly College of Science
Tim Rinehart (Cross-filed)

Education
Emily Miller

Engineering
Mohamed Alzarooni
Hadi Al Lawati
Aakash Sondhi

Health & Human Development
Danny Murphy

Liberal Arts
Victoria Woods

Schreyer Honors College
Mike Mancini
Anthony Mitchell

Smeal College of Business 
Noel Purcell
Manisha Yarlagadda

Campaigning for the 2014 election officially kicks off on March 17 at 5 a.m. The election will be held on April 2, but there will be plenty of coverage and candidate profiles before then so you can make the best choice at the virtual ballot box that day.

Full disclosure: Greg Schlosser, Katie Tully, and Noel Purcell are Onward State staff members and UPUA candidates. Kevin Horne and Ali Fogarty, both Onward State editors, are also on the Election Commission. These individuals will be entirely removed from our election coverage, and will not be party to any potential staff endorsements.