One Syracuse University student has turned in a petition to run for student body president and vice president as of Wednesday, said Board of Elections and Membership Chair Paulina Colon. The deadline to turn petitions in is Friday.

Janine Bogris, the vice chair of elections for BEM, said that all of the petitions that the board printed have been taken and that it is common for people to hand in petitions closer to the deadline. Colon said that running for these positions requires receiving 500 signatures, and students are given less than a month to compile the signatures.

“They are coming,” she said of the petitions.

Bogris added that SA has been posting about the petitions on all of the organization’s social media and that SA President Boris Gresely sent an email to the student body with information about when the petitions were due.

This semester marks the first time that the SA president and vice president will be elected in the spring. Elections were previously held in the fall, but a change in the SA constitution in the fall of 2013 made it so that the presidential term aligns with the academic calendar.

As for turnout in this April’s elections, the organization has bigger expectations for this year’s elections.

“We are expecting that the student body will get more involved and we will have a higher voting percentage than last year,” Bogris said.