Candidates seeking positions in the Student Association executive have begun to emerge as SA election season gears up, but the eligibility rules for candidates are still being debated within the organization.

Candidate registration began Monday morning, prompting candidacy announcements from three students vying for top positions in the organization.

Executive Vice President Kyle Boyer and Jason Lifton, a member of SA President Vishal Aswani’s cabinet, announced Wednesday their candidacy for president and EVP respectively. SA Sen. Nick Polk, U-at-Large and chair of the Rules Committee, announced Sunday that he will also seek the presidential spot.

Both Boyer and Lifton said advocacy will be a pillar of their campaign, rather than programming like the Unity Ball and inaugural float.

“There were commitments to make sustainability a priority, but they were pushed aside in favor of programming,” Boyer said in a news release, referring to Aswani’s goals this year.

Lifton echoed Boyer’s concerns about programming, though the two are not running together.

“I have seen the SA become a programming body that oversteps its boundaries, an SA that does not spend their time advocating for students and instead gets caught up in its own internal politics and an SA that doesn’t make a unified effort to communicate with students,” Lifton said in a news release. “All of these things are unacceptable to me.”

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Polk said he will focus on small, attainable goals as a candidate for SA president.

“Just looking back at the past couple of years, there are so many plausible goals that have made GW better,” Polk said. “GW Reads, 4-RIDE improvements, Colonials Invasion, mandatory spending rollover. Anybody who tells you they know how to reduce mandatory spending is lying. Believe me, I’ve tried.”

SA Sen. Logan Dobson, CCAS-U, successfully pushed for an open registration procedure for students seeking positions within the SA last Tuesday. Dobson’s bill would only require interested students to submit a statement of candidacy to be added to the ballot, but Aswani vetoed it on Thursday.

In the past, students needed to collect signatures from 1 percent of the student body in order to be placed on the ballot.

Dobson said he disagreed with Aswani’s veto.

“Vishal’s veto was unwarranted. It confuses me that the first bill he vetoes all year would be one that passed by a wide, veto-proof, margin,” Dobson wrote in an e-mail.

Aswani said he agrees that students seeking positions in the SA senate should not be required to attain signatures to be placed on the ballot, but he said candidates for executive office should be required to show tangible proof that they are serious about running. He proposed a new version of the bill that would require only candidates for president and executive vice president offices to collect the necessary signatures.

“The most important offices of the Student Association – those of president and executive vice president – require individuals who are prepared to make significant sacrifices to fulfill and exceed their duties,” Aswani wrote in a news release.

Boyer said he is okay with collecting signatures to run.

“Either way, the same people will run. Taking away signatures would just make it easier,” Boyer said.

SA elections are scheduled for Feb. 25 and 26.