During the next few weeks, the Government of the Student Body will be holding a committee to discuss the merits and flaws of the Dead Week idea.

Dead Week is the week before finals. The idea behind it is that this week is to be set aside to prepare and begin studying for final exams.

Under the current system, during Dead Week all students in the dorms are encouraged to keep quiet for most of the day with the exception of a “rowdy hour” during which they still can’t actually get that rowdy.

All student clubs, activities and organizations are to stop holding meetings to allow students more time to study. 

Teachers, lecturers, professors, etc. are encouraged to let up on homework, projects and exams during Dead Week and instead have a week of review in order to help students be better prepared for their exams.

Most of this makes sense. So why does GSB want to change it?

It’s not strong enough. 

Luke Roling, GSB president, said, “Current policies in place on the ISU website suggest actions that can be taken during Dead Week that outline things course instructors should try to avoid during the designated week.” 

The key word there is “should.” Many professors do not do this, and instead burden their students with “projects, smaller exams and other such items throughout Dead Week,” which keeps students from doing the final-specific studying that Dead Week was supposed to encourage. 

This serves to increase student stress level and generally make us all unhappy people all the way through to Finals Week.

So what’s going to be done to correct this problem? 

“GSB would like to see the language in dead week policy re-examined and tightened to better protect students,” Roling said.

We may not ever see a policy so strong as to forbid projects and due-dates during Dead Week; some professors have course material that requires some projects be due at the end of Dead Week in order to give students adequate time.

However, we could see new legislation to increase transparency about what is expected of students during Dead Week by their professors. The current idea is to require professors to outline in the syllabus given out the first week what assignments and projects will be due during Dead Week.

We would like to see professors entirely forego tests and last-minute exams during Dead Week. As students, most of us study for one test at a time in a given class. If there are no tests during Dead Week, the test to study for, by default, will be the final, and this would certainly make us happier. We think the majority of the student body would be inclined to agree.

So this editorial board would like to see Roling and the GSB lead the way in making Dead Week easier on students. We’d love it if professors would cut us just a bit of slack during the last week before their finals, instead of pushing new material on us all the way through to the bitter end. It could be that we’re just lazy, but we like to think that we can, for one week, push ourselves to study on our own.