OU students will be able to enjoy a lighter workload during this semester’s dead week as a reform passed in 2016 goes into effect.
The dead week reform has put a number of restrictions on professors by completely banning exams during dead week, requiring that any quizzes given be worth no more than 3 percent and requiring that assignments given be worth less than 10 percent of a student’s final grade, according to the OU Faculty Handbook.
Professors are also required to state any special cases deviating from the policy in their course syllabus.
The bill passed with a vote of 19-6 in the OU Faculty Senate in October 2016, after failing several times before.
Wayne Riggs, OU Faculty Senate chair and philosophy professor, said the Student Government Association worked hard last year to get the reform passed and executed as soon as possible.
“They wanted to get it done as soon as they could — it was a lot of negotiating, so it took a while. And then once we passed it in Faculty Senate, it was just implementing it as soon as was feasible after that,” Riggs said.
Riggs said the idea of a reform was more seriously considered last year because of the professionalism the SGA students showed in presenting the problem to the senate and because of their use of a survey showing real evidence of how students were feeling.
“Before when students had brought this it was just kind of like, ‘the students want more time,’ and it's like, ‘well, is there a problem other than you sort of vaguely feel stressed at the end of the semester like we all do?'” Riggs said.
After realizing that there may be an issue, one of the next major hurdles in passing a dead week reform was addressing the individual needs of each department on campus, Riggs said.
“Here’s the problem: You go into a room full of faculty from all over campus . and you want to tell them all, 'here’s how you all have to do your finals,' and everybody in the room’s got different needs,” Riggs said.
Riggs said the faculty also felt skeptical passing a reform due to reservations on whether or not giving students more time to study would actually be beneficial to them or not.
“Faculty are a little skeptical that these sort of things actually help students very much. Having more time to do things doesn’t mean that you avail yourself with more time,” Riggs said. “It’s not just faculty wanting to be free, it's faculty feeling obliged to make it possible for them to do what their students need them to do.”
However, Erica Nadolski, biology sophomore, said she is glad that these regulations have been put in place because she feels like dead week should be time specifically allotted for studying.
“I feel like studying is all I should devote my time to at that point. They have a whole semester to get (assignments) done with if they want to assign them,” Nadolski said.
Riggs said he too believes there are some cases where students might experience issues with too much work during dead week, and he said he wants them to be able to have requirements to wield against faculty who are not willing to give them a break.
“I think there are a small number of cases where students could get jammed up if these rules weren’t followed, and I hate to think it, but I suppose I have to admit it’s probably true that there’s a small number of faculty who would just be jerks about it,” Riggs said.
Tate Mason, biology senior, said he is glad the reform passed because he feels that professors should be able to structure their classes well enough in order to avoid needing to cover material during dead week.
“If the college course is structured right, you can get enough done in the first 15 or so weeks so that by the time you get to dead week, if you need those extra days of classes to cover the material, then it’s probably time that could’ve been spent elsewhere in the class where you could’ve been more exact,” Mason said.
Riggs said there is no real way for the university to ensure that the faculty follows the policy, but students have a right to point out if there is an issue now.
“They don’t have people marching from classroom to classroom inspecting, but all of the faculty are expected to abide by the policy and if a faculty member doesn’t, a student is entitled to bring that to the professor’s attention and insist that they follow the policy,” Riggs said.
Students are going to take advantage of dead week to prepare for their exams, Mason said.
“If you have a week that you can actually prepare for finals, it will ultimately benefit the students and they’ll get better grades in their classes,” Mason said.
