Students signed up in larger numbers this spring to run for Student Union Treasury and Senate, with many taking motivation from the fallout over Treasury’s vote to fund a panel featuring Bristol Palin.

The majority of the candidates are coming from outside SU. The influx of candidates has made this spring’s elections much more competitive than normal.

New candidates were motivated by their dissatisfaction with SU. Incumbents want to continue what they started.

Candidates are particularly focused on increasing communication between SU and students.

Seventeen students are running for 13 SU Senate positions, and 13 are running for nine seats on SU Treasury.

In the fall, there was only one contested Treasury seat, an open Arts & Sciences Senate seat and two other contested seats.

Although the election commissioner, sophomore Sarah Rubin, said the Palin controversy wasn’t the only motivation for the increase in candidates in this spring’s elections, she added that people have realized what SU can do.

“People realize that Treasury can do all these things, and usually I don’t think people pay that much attention to who gets funded,” Rubin said. “When students see how their money can be spent, and if they’re very against it or very pleased with it, they see how much power and how much change SU representatives can bring.”

That sense of power motivated the candidates.

“The reason I first became interested in Treasury was because of the Bristol Palin fiasco,” sophomore Treasury candidate Aron Lurie said. “I thought that it was a waste of money because it was going toward marketing for the event instead of going toward someone who would provide good discussion.”

Many candidates noted that the problem is greater than just the one SU decision and stems from an overall lack of communication between SU and the student body.

“I think that the issue is bigger than just Bristol Palin; I think there needs to be more communication about how people want money to be spent,” said freshman Leigha Empson, who is running for SU Senate. “There seems to be a lot of disconnect between senators and constituents they’re supposed to be representing.”

According to senior Jasmine Berg, speaker of the Treasury, the competition is a marked improvement for a race in which write-in candidates are occasionally elected.

SU officials hope that the competition will lead to a more representative Senate and Treasury.

“It’s a good way to make sure that the senators who are getting elected are people students actually think will represent their views on Senate matters,” said sophomore Mamatha Challa, speaker of the Senate.

Not all of the candidates are typical contenders.

Charles Levenson is running to “represent an underrepresented majority at Washington University”—those dissatisfied with SU.

In his candidate statement, he noted his personal reason for running.

“I represent the people at this fine university who want a system that can actually serve some purpose,” Levenson wrote in the statement. “To express this disdain, people vote for me so that I may be as much of a nuisance to the Student Government as humanly possible. They vote for me so I can filibuster meetings for hours, and watch how the lack of passing resolutions makes absolutely no difference in student’s lives whatsoever.”

Response to his candidacy ranged from dismayed to contemplative.

“I think it’s interesting,” Challa said. “If he gets elected, that’ll say something about how students are looking at the election, their reading and actually caring about it. I have some faith in the student body.”

Other candidates have different strategies for making SU better address student interests.

Sophomore Charles Herrera, who is running for an ArtSci seat in Senate, said he hopes to personally improve shortcomings in communication.

“Everyone always talks about improving communication,” Herrera said. “I believe I have the experience to actually get that done. I interned with a political campaign last summer and was the point man for keeping constituents apprised of activities in the campaign over Facebook and Twitter. My vision is that if I’m elected to Senate, I would be on those mediums during the meeting [to get feedback].”

Incumbents running for reelection have a narrower vision of what they would like to address.

Sophomore Class President J.R. Davis said he hopes to join SU Senate to address complacency in leadership and evaluate internal structure.

University Initiatives Chair Josh Aiken said he hopes to continue his current work into another term.

“I think that a lot of the goals and projects we have are long term, and I want to see them through,” said Aiken, a freshman.

Junior Zach Schmitz, a Senate incumbent, said he feels the same. He made video tours of off-campus Residential Life apartments. The video tours will launch on Tuesday.

“I found my personal project that I worked on very fulfilling,” Schmitz said. “I want to be able to have the opportunity to keep on doing things like that.”