Dead week is meant to give students extra time to put aside for studying, but some students have concerns that dead week is more stressful than finals week.Ann Marie Barlass, communication disorders senior, said dead week should be a little more dead.”I usually have exams, papers and quizzes due, so it’s not a concentrated study period as it’s supposed to be,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve actually had a dead week.”The spring semester’s dead week – officially called “concentrated study period” – runs today through Sunday, according to the University academic calendar.”As far as I know, its purpose is to give students an opportunity to prepare for final examinations while no extracurricular activities are scheduled,” said University Registrar Robert Doolos in an e-mail to The Daily Reveille. Graded required coursework, including exams, quizzes and homework, may be assigned during the concentrated study period if the work counts for at most 10 percent of the student’s grade in the course, according to the LSU General Catalog.Laboratory courses are exempt from the policy.Assignments scheduled on the syllabus within the first two weeks of the semester are also exempt from the 10 percent limit assuming that the work on the assignments is done throughout the semester, according to the catalog.Justin Gilberti, sports administration junior, said he has a marketing test during dead week that counts for at least 25 percent of his grade.”It’s unfair because it’s putting pressure on me,” he said. “I should be preparing for exams instead of focusing on a regular test.”Student Government provides print and electronic forms for students to report dead week violations.These appeals were created by previous SG President Stuart Watkins last fall. Current SG President J Hudson said students were never able to see if any action was taken on reported violations in the past, and SG plans to change that.”Something we’re working on with the first round of violations is where students can see progress with violations,” Hudson said. “They’ve sent them and never seen the results. We’re going to keep an anonymous spreadsheet that will show if any action was taken.”SG wants students to report violations no matter how small, Hudson said.”We want to make sure Academic Affairs knows about the situation,” he said. “If there are hundreds of e-mails, we want to take those, analyze them individually and make sure each student’s voice is heard.”Diane Mohler, assistant director for the Center for Academic Success, said no new material should be introduced during the concentrated study period. She said assignments like papers or presentations would be good to have during dead week if they pull together material learned throughout the semester.Mohler said the week before finals is a good time for a concentrated study period because it helps students focus if they take advantage of it.”Students can have the opportunity to fully integrate what they’ve taken in throughout the semester,” she said.Dead week is also a good time for students to catch up on sleep and get healthier, Mohler said, which are critical to doing well on finals.Middleton Library will have extended hours during dead week. The library will be open from 7:15 a.m. to 2 a.m. today through Friday.Nancy Colyar, assistant dean of libraries, said the first and second floors in Middleton Library will remain open for 24 hours starting Saturday and ending Saturday, May 15, to cope with the large amount of students studying at the library. – – – -Contact Mary Walker Baus at [email protected]