The flyers and banners that have popped up around campus mark the culmination of several weeks… The flyers and banners that have popped up around campus mark the culmination of several weeks of personal investment by the 18 Student Government Board candidates — 16 Board member candidates and two presidential — who will find out if they will take a seat on the 2012 Board tonight.

The University has allowed these student politicians to actively campaign since Oct. 28. The 18 candidates who hope to get elected have spent money — mostly from their own pockets — and invested a great deal of time in their campaigns.

While Pitt students will vote on each candidate individually, most candidates pool their resources in slates of three. This helps them delegate tasks such as organizing the campaign and attending meetings. The candidates can end up spending hundreds of dollars of their own money in their effort to win a seat on the Board, which among other responsibilities, allocates money from the Student Activities Fee paid by all non-College of General Studies undergraduates.

CJ Stavrakos, a sophomore majoring in industrial engineering and political science, chose to run by himself. For him and the two other candidates running individually, getting their names out may take a little extra effort.

“Part of the challenge is [that] I am my own campaign manager, whereas I know that some of the groups have someone else helping them,” Stavrakos said.

Stavrakos hasn’t requested any donations from the student organizations he meets with or spent any money on his campaign. No one assists him in seeking endorsements. He said he expected to spend around $20 on printing fees for his flyers, which he began distributing on Wednesday for his paper campaign. Aside from that, his campaign has been cost-free.

Pooja Patel, a sophomore who, like Stavrakos, is running for the first time this year, has already worked for the Board as chairperson of the academic affairs committee. She and the other two candidates on her slate, Pitt First, have each spent $200 on the campaign, ordering two banners and 75 T-shirts.

Patel and her slate mates, who are all running for Board member positions, have paid the costs entirely on their own and have not received donations from student organizations. She said $400 is the upper limit of what candidates spend.

Patel and her two slate mates, Scott Blackburn and Richard White, have also made significant time commitments since campaigning began a few weeks ago, spending two or three hours nightly visiting student organizations.

“The elections process is pretty overwhelming, but the key is really time management. Schoolwork comes first for me, but I’ve still managed to campaign hard,” Patel said.

Kari Rosenkaimer, the chair of the elections committee, said the monetary costs of running for Student Government Board are relatively low.

“It’s definitely not like the homecoming campaign, where you have to spend money to be a part of it,” she said, estimating that homecoming candidates spend between $300 and $1,000 on their campaigns.

Rosenkaimer is responsible for overseeing how the candidates carry out their campaigns and conduct themselves on election day to make sure they stay within the set rules.

Her committee set a $100 limit on the donations candidates can accept from each organization that endorses them. She confirms that the donations each candidate receives are within the limit through receipts from the candidates.

The elections committee has also set a limit of $1 per pamphlet, pin or other item the candidates purchase for the paper campaign, which began Wednesday. Starting then, candidates can post flyers on campus and distribute campaign material.

While Rosenkaimer acknowledged the commitment candidates make, she felt that these students can handle it.

“They realize they have taken on this commitment and if they want to do well in school and they want to get elected, they’re going to have to do both,” Rosenkaimer said.

Halim Genus, who is running for a Board member position on the Panther Progress slate, also emphasized the time commitment that comes with campaigning. He estimated that he has visited five student organizations a night since he began campaigning. The junior Africana studies and political science major ran for a Board position last year, but missed a seat by two votes.

This year, his strategy has been to reach as many students as possible. To accomplish this, he has spent 20 to 25 hours a week on his campaign.

Genus and the two others on his slate, Robert Beecher and Tyler Walters, split the costs of the two banners and 150 T-shirts they ordered, which they have been handing out since campaigning began. To keep litter down, his slate agreed to only hand out quarter-sheet flyers on the day of the election.

Having received no donations, Pitt Progress has financed its campaign out of pocket. Genus declined to comment on what the campaign has cost him and his slate mates, though he said he does not see it as a burden.

“It’s definitely been manageable. I’ve been prepared for this for a while, and I worked over the summer,” he said.

Where to vote:

my.pitt.edu from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Litchfield Towers from 9 to 11 a.m.

Sutherland Hall from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Market Central from 5 to 7 p.m.