Senior Ammar Karimjee may be the first student in recent history to allocate Student Union’s full annual budget of more than $2.5 million twice, pending a decision by Student Union’s executive council.

Under the current system, the incoming vice president of finance sets the budget for the coming year in April, and the Student Union Senate and Treasury vote on whether to approve it. But the only thing dictating this timing is precedent.

Since the timing for passing the general budget is not set under the Student Union constitution, no legislative change is required in order to allow the outgoing vice president of finance to set the budget for the following year.

Karimjee said that setting the budget earlier in the spring would give student groups more time to arrange programming for the following year, but some have voiced concern that the move will impede new SU executive slates from making major changes during their terms.

Nonetheless, a straw poll, or informal vote, taken during Wednesday’s senate meeting indicated that most senators were in favor of the change.

“[The new timeline] will bolster creativity. It wouldn’t necessarily bolster the creativity of the Senate, it wouldn’t necessarily bolster the creativity of the execs, but it will bolster the creativity of the student groups,” sophomore senator Michael Hoosier said.

The primary benefit of the earlier deadline, SU president Julian Nicks said, is heightened flexibility for student groups, particularly social programming boards that would benefit from a budget set earlier in the spring.

“They were saying, ‘Half the issues that we have in terms of being able to book early is the fiscal cycle.’ They can’t book for fall until they have their fall funding,” Nicks said.

The earlier deadline would allow the vice president of finance to draft the budget after a year of experience rather than having the incoming one rush it together immediately after the start of his or her term, as has historically been the case.

Junior senator Martin Lockman acknowledged that there would be a number of benefits to the change but voiced concern with the way it would have to be implemented.

He chose to abstain from the straw poll Senate held Wednesday, when every other member of the Senate voted in favor of the change.

“Frankly, I think it is something that needs to be done, the budget process needs to be reformed and this a good way of doing it. But nobody seemed to be willing to discuss the fact that this does give the current class council control over two budgets. In reality, there’s not a lot of change in the budget from year to year, and knowing a lot of the class council members personally, I know that they have the best interests of the student body at heart, but I thought it was something that merited further discussion, and that was kind of struck down, so I abstained from voting,” Lockman said.

Sophomore senator Jeremy Sherman noted that while senators may have had some concerns with the change, the impression was that incoming SU executives would retain some flexibility over the budget.

“I am supportive of it, mainly because I believe that a more experienced Student Union exec would create a better budget, and a more experienced Senate and Treasury would have a more in-depth conversation about it,” Sherman said. “There were some concerns that we had, but we understood that even though it would be the old exec creating the budget, the new exec would have the power to make changes if they saw fit.”

Over the course of the meeting, Sherman became convinced that the change was for the best.

“It would force groups to have their ideas for next semester in line early, but it would make our process as an entire Student Union government, as an entire student body, much easier,” Sherman said.

Karimjee said that while his exec hopes to make the changes, they will continue to gauge student opinion to see whether the issue is something they support.

“We all [SU officers] think that [these] changes are going to be greatly beneficial to the student body,” Karimjee said. “[The move] gives all our student groups access to information about the coming semester earlier and therefore enables them to program better.”