The end of the semester is hot on our trails. Two weeks to go and projects, final assignments and exams are already starting to pile up. And it won’t stop until May 10 because NKU does not currently have a week for students to focus on reviewing and reviewing alone.

SGA President Erik Pederson and  Vice President-elect David Trump plan to advocate for the idea of implementing an academic review week during their 2013-14 presidential year.

An academic review week, according to Pederson, would prohibit professors from assigning new projects, assignments, quizzes or tests that would be due the week before final exams. This sounds much like a dead week, which is already in place at University of Kentucky and Murray State University.

But with Pederson’s plan, previously assigned assignments would still be allowed to have a due date during review week.

So now the question is: What’s the point?

An academic dead week is a week where there are no assignments due and no tests during the week before finals. It’s a chance for students to study for final exams and for professors to catch up on the semester’s grades.

An academic review week would change nothing in the current system at NKU, besides prohibiting professors from assigning new assignments after the syllabus is handed out.

This is unreasonable because the syllabus is always subject to change based on the professor’s schedule and unexpected events throughout the semester, causing some assignments to be pushed back to account for lost time.

But if a dead week was already established, professors would plan for ending their syllabus the week leading up to the last week of classes, preventing any last minute due date changes.

If professors do not like the idea of a review week, they will just schedule assignments on the syllabus during the last week of classes, which contradicts the whole idea of having time set aside to study or finish final projects.

Although no formal resolution has been drafted, the team is in the works with faculty members to create guidelines for an academic review week.

Unless review week is a baby step SGA is taking to eventually having a dead week, it doesn’t make much sense. Instead of rushing to get a review week approved, the solution would be for the Student Senate to push for an actual dead week that will directly benefit students.

One of Pederson’s and Trump’s main goals is to represent the “student voice.” It is hard to believe students would prefer a review week over a dead week.