Our Opinion: University officials should be less concerned about the offensiveness of dead week’s name and more concerned with its effectiveness. This University policy is to aid students in their studying, however the lack of its enforcement says otherwise.
As a whole our society has increasingly become more sensitive to various terms and phrases used in our everyday language. This hypersensitivity can be seen by the changing of the phrase “Dead Week’ into “the last week of the semester.” Unless the characters from Twilight complain to administration, how can a student be offended by this natural state of being? While the delicacy of the term dead in Dead Week is the reason University officials support the name change, the real reason is no more than a slight of hand on University officials’ part.
According to Lewis Hunt, vice provost and University registrar, the term “Dead Week” was never a part of University policy or regulation. Hunt’s argument of this phrase was never a part of the University, is immediately compromised by the Official University academic calendar refers to this final weeks of classes as Dead Week. While the name is debated over, the enforcement remains untouched.
N.C. State’s policy regarding Dead Week is clear-cut, however the majority of the time it is not properly enforced by the University or individual colleges. The policy explicitly says “in order that students may complete semester projects, take lab tests, and prepare for final examinations, faculty members shall not give any test or quizzes or assign any additional papers or projects during the final week of the semester,” yet there are instances of professors squeezing in assignments on flimsy technicalities.
In order for students to actually receive this break from over-abundant work prior to exams, college deans and University administrators should protect it. This issue is not new to N.C. State. In a 2001 Technician staff editorial, it discusses the faculty’s flagrant disregard of students’ academic well-being by not allowing them the appropriate time to study for their finals by putting more work on them throughout their last week. Administrators should recognize this as an issue and should not allow professors to take away this time from the students.
This is easily done by stronger restrictions on this last week of the semester, and enforcing the rules they make. No student should have to fear how to accomplish a task for a class and study for all the finals. This smoke-screen of a name change might be effective in distracting students from their Dead Week, it will not change the time be stolen from them by faculty and administration.
