They miss all of their classes to meet as many students as they can before they lose their voices from shouting and their hands turn blue from hand-shaking.
They do all of this in hopes that students will circle the No. 1 next to their names on the Michigan Student Assembly ballot next week.
"(Running for MSA) certainly does require tons of time and getting up really, really early," said Students' Party Coordinator Chad Bailey. "It is really hard work sometimes."
To help them cope with the long and usually hectic hours in their quest for an MSA seat, many candidates join or form parties to centralize their efforts and pool resources.
"Parties do provide guidelines - I learned a lot when I first ran with a party," said MSA Vice President Probir Mehta, a member of the Michigan Party. "Parties give people a sense of direction and purpose - but you always want to make sure candidates can make individual choices and have a say on what goals the party wants to achieve."
"Our campaign is centered around our party - we share the same interests and ideas," said Nihilist Party Chair Andrew Serowik. "We are a strong collective group, which works to promote individual candidates."
Kenneth Jones, spokesperson for the United People's Coalition, said all of his party's candidates were also working toward common goals.
"Our campaign is a group effort," Jones said. "We have a strong group of individual candidates, but work together and are in constant contact - our message is a group one."
But other party members said individual candidates were stronger than a collective party theme.
"We aren't doing anything together as a party," said Crush the Purple Dinosaur Party member David Burden. "But a lack of a strong party is not going to change anybody's mind about us."
A "joke" party name can also work as a ploy to garner some votes. Besides Burden's party's campaign against a fictional dinosaur, the Slumber Party also hopes that a zany campaign label will attract some extra support. Both parties are new to the MSA arena this semester, as is the Nihilist Party.
"We hope that people who don't normally vote, or do vote but don't know what's going on, will vote for us," said Slumber Party member Ted Chen. "I think people will notice our name first."
Parties with weird and wacky names are nothing new to assembly elections. Two years ago Mike House won an LSA seat on the assembly under the Beavis and Butthead Party label.
Most parties said they take up a general collection from each candidate to finance party posters and advertising.
"We ask each candidate to make a contribution of $15 for party posters," said Michigan Party Chair Dan Serota. "We use that money to produce things like party posters, which everyone helps to design - but each candidate can spend their own money to make their own individual posters."
Most candidates reported spending between $50 and 200 just for individual posters and advertising during campaign season. Costs for presidential election season in the spring can run into the thousands.
But other parties said they would not ask their members to chip in to a general operating fund.
"We prefer to find money from University groups who are willing to support our cause," Jones said. "It hasn't hurt us yet. We've been able to run a successful campaign - but if we have to stand out in 40 feet of snow with buckets to raise funds, we will do that before we will use our candidates' money." Jones said UPC gets campaign funding from members of student groups such Alianza, the Black Student Union and several engineering groups and societies on campus.
Victors Party spokesperson Nicholas Kirk said his party was also relying on outside sources to finance campaign activities.
"We are drawing support from outside grassroots students organizations," Kirk said. "This is not a mommy-and-daddy-driven campaign - this is a group of students with jobs who are willing to provide funds and want to see us succeed." Kirk said the Victors Party receives money from individual students who are involved in a variety of student organizations on campus.
Mehta said the high cost of fielding an MSA campaign often bars potential candidates from running because of a lack of funds. Mehta and MSA President Fiona Rose spent more than $1,000 on their presidential campaign last spring.
"It is becoming very elitist because it cuts out students with great ideas because they don't have the money to get elected," Mehta said.
Mehta said the assembly should look into imposing spending limits for individual campaigns.
"We don't want to hinder people's ability to win an election," Mehta said. "But at the same time, mommy and daddy should not be able to buy an assembly seat for their kid."
While paying for the posters that bury campus during election time monopolizes much campaign money, parties in the past have used money on more off-the-wall campaign gimmicks.
"(Last year) we rented a golf cart - we drove it around the Diag and gave people a ride to their classes," Serota said. "I'm not sure how well it worked and it was very expensive - but it was fun."
Serota also has turned a few heads on campus with his huge advertisements on the metal boards that line the Diag.
"(The Diag boards) really aren't that expensive - they cost only $6 a week," Serota said. "But the ads means you have to get up really early before school and go wait in line - people start waiting at about 4 a.m." However, several of Serota's Diag boards were stolen Monday night or Tuesday morning.
Besides their catchy name, the Slumber Party plans to hold a "slumber party on the Diag."
"All of our supporters are going to rally on the Diag and we are planning to sleep out there," said party member Jonathan Kuo. "The weather's gotten a little more cold than we would have liked, but we are pretty dedicated."
Unfortunately for the University custodial staff, MSA election season means blanketing campus with thousands of posters and fliers promoting both parties and individual candidates.
One of the things party memberships provide candidates is the opportunity to be part of an organized group of dedicated candidates who work collectively to cover the campus with paper - all long before the first 8 a.m. class begins.
"We just came off a national campaign and are still completely in campaign form - we are ready to work 20-hour days, seven days a week and we are ready to get up as early as it takes," said Kirk, who is also president of the campus chapter of the College Republicans.
"As president of the CR, I've done all kinds of campaign work and every member of my party is as focused as I am."
But other parties said campaigning did not have to be an all-out blitz to the finish line.
"I wouldn't call our campaign hectic - nobody's going to get up at 2 a.m. or 4 (a.m.)," said Liberty Party spokesperson Martin Howrylak. "Maybe we'll be up at 7 (a.m.), at the earliest, but we aren't going to go totally overboard."
But as candidates toil long hours to put up their fliers and posters, members of the University custodial staff work just as hard to take them down.
"Those fliers shouldn't be on the wall - they are only allowed to be on bulletin boards and designated areas," said Plant and Building Services Manager Nathan Norman. "If they aren't in the appropriate places, they should be taken down and we do do that constantly."
But candidates said they were willing to break some of the rules and put up fliers day after day to get their message out.
"Getting up early is nothing new to me - we'll be up most mornings doing postering," Serowik said. "We use posters and they are important for name recognition, but they will not be a main focus of our campaign - we are concerned with the amount of litter involved."
Burden was one of several current MSA representatives who abandoned the now-defunct Wolverine Party to become an independent before signing on with the Crush the Purple Dinosaur Party, founded this fall.
"There is no reason for the party system, so I don't miss being in a strong party," Burden said.
LSA Rep. Andy Schor, who ran for president under the Wolverine label in March, said his former party worked to make the assembly more non-partisan, but that parties are still instrumental to running a successful campaign.
"(The Wolverine Party) wanted to eliminate politics from the assembly - I think we did that. We swung the vote towards non-partisanship," Schor said. "People are more independent now - but they still need their parties to run because everybody knows the parties are election machines, that's why the Michigan Party will never fold."
The Michigan Party has held MSA's gavel since the party's founding four years ago.
Schor is now one of the 28 independent candidates vying for an assembly seat without party support. He said running as an independent is an uphill climb.
"I'm gonna do everything I can to get elected," Schor said. "But I don't think it's practical for people to run for LSA seats as independents - yet. Hopefully I can change that."
Rose said parties no longer play the dominant role on the assembly that they have in the recent past.
"I do think parties have declined - but that's because individuals have strengthened," Rose said. "In the past, parties have divided the assembly but I think now members are not willing to get caught up in partisanship and parties' divisiveness - now members are willing to look beyond parties and work to move the assembly forward."
"Parties give people a sense of direction and purpose - but you always want to make sure candidates can make individual choices and have a say on what goals the party wants to achieve." - Probir Mehta, MSA vice president
JENNIFER BRADLEY-SWIFT/Daily
Derick Norman, a custodian at Angell Hall, tears down an MSA election poster. The custodians remove the large volume of posters on the walls at 5 p.m. each day and those on corkboards every Friday.