SG Dead Week bill is beneficial to all, needs faculty help

The Dead Week bill has been passed through the Student Government Senate, but its ride is far from over (And the path is not well worn, nor will it be easy to break in).

There was little opposition for the bill, which would keep professors from assigning more than one test, project or paper during the week before finals.

The bill goes to the University Senate Council and then the University Senate. There you will find your opposition.

Faculty like Matthew Zook, a UK geography professor, are the type of opposition it seems SG hasn’t prepared itself for. They are the professors who don’t see the point and will be against the bill.

“I can’t imagine a proposal like this getting past the Faculty Senate,” Zook said in a Kernel article. “Some classes need that extra week to fit in projects and papers.”

Actually, some classes need to make use of the rest of the semester. It’s not a problem for students when one class has a project and a final, or a paper and a project, all in two weeks. It’s students who have three or four classes that do the same.

It is university policy to not allow a student to take more than two exams in one day. If there is a scheduling conflict, the student can have one of the three exams rescheduled. That policy is in the best interest of the student, and so is the one SG President Tyler Montell is calling a potential legacy for the students of 2008-09.

But not all students; Christo Smith, a Russian and Eastern European studies sophomore, believes the bill will only allow students to be lazy, as stated in a letter to the editor in the Kernel.

“I know that finals are hard, and that every professor seems to think their class is the only one that matters,” Smith said. “However, I must express my displeasure that so much whining might go on that an institution like UK would tie the hands of its instructors.”

In reality, the Dead Week bill seems to be doing the opposite of tying hands, it will actually force professors to spread out their workloads. It’s not fair to a student for what could be 50 percent of their grade to come within two weeks of each other. And it’s certainly not fair to have that experience in two, three or more classes.

A comment on the Kernel Web site by the forthcoming “anonymous” said this was just a ploy to give students their social life back. Dear anonymous, some students are actually at school to learn and still  prefer to have their work spread evenly throughout the semester. Shocking, right?

It’s not just the medical, pharmacy and dentistry students who work hard – however, it’s certainly true they work harder than average. But what about just being average? Average does not equate to a lack of difficulty.

Students take an average workload of around 15 hours. By the typical recommendation, they should study three hours for each hour in class. That’s around 45 hours of studying, onto the 15 hours of class. If you think about the last two weeks of a semester, the  average semester just wilts in comparison.

So if your argument is that students just want a social life and you’re arguing that they should prepare for the real world, just a step back and take a look at what most professionals work each week: 40 hours.

Students already pile in long, hard weeks to get by during the semester. To ask that professors help the students who are paying high tuition rates to get an education is not a stretch, and should be considered by the Faculty Senate.

There is still a difficult road ahead, and there will be more professors, like Zook, to contest this bill. And this one will affect all of us, average or not.