Yes
Rowan Davis
Oxford University is really fucking difficult. Essay deadlines, relationships, clubs, the slow realisation that being top of the year in year seven isn’t the only qualification required for academia – it’s really hard. And wouldn’t it be fantastic if it could be just that tiny little bit easier, slow the pace enough to get you over the 5th Week blues and remind you why you decided to study what you do. Extending the terms by one small week would make it that little bit easier.
It’s important to make it clear that reading weeks wouldn’t just make people feel a bit more comfortable (although that’s great too!), they’d make this university safer, they’d make a place built for able-bodied, neurotypical white men more accessible to all of the wonderful people that don’t fit the classical ‘scholar’ narrative.
It’s about saying to student parents that it’s okay to spend time with their kids over the half term; it’s about saying to trans folks that it’s okay to take a week and sort out all the bullshit paperwork; it’s about letting people know that whilst your degree is super important, so is your mental health.
What’s more, the absolute mess that my housemate and I always end up in by 6th Week in no way makes my essays any better.
On the subject of essays, one area that this slight slowing of the pace would help is joint honours school degrees (such as HisPol or Human Sciences). The horror stories you hear where they write three essays one week and none the next could be helped by a“reading week, which would allow students to research topics in advance and de-stress.
Worries expressed on social media that a reading week would add to costs are important, and definitely need to be taken into account. This demonstrates that good disability activism depends upon an interse tional approach to issues of student welfare and class. We should also be fighting for rent caps, Free Education, a reduction in living costs, and the extra costs for students that are forced to suspend status because of the impact of this University on their mental health.
More broadly, why is it seen as classist to say that I shouldn’t be feeling shitty all the time in a University that can definitely afford to help out? For one, our Vice Chancellor’s salary would pay for 64 years of Wadham College accommodation at the average day rate.
What’s more, the notion that the extreme levels of stress which the University places on us is good in helping mould us into perfect corporate machines should be resisted: learning has value in and of itself and we deserve the opportunity to explore our subjects further. Imagine if you had an extra week to actually read around your subject or to go over that particularly hard bit of work you’d forgotten from the start of term.
Imagine how many people wouldn’t have had to drop out for a year if they’d had the opportunity to breathe just a little bit more. Sleep is so vital to mental health and Oxford is just not designed for it. We have one of the shortest terms of any university but pack in just as much work; surely slowing down just a little isn’t all that counterintuitive.
As I’ve said before, reading weeks are not a golden bullet. They wouldn’t stop people having mental health issues and they wouldn’t reduce the amount of paperwork I have to do. But what they would do is help to foster a space in which we can have these problems and get through the term just that bit easier.
No
Sian Meaney
I dislike 5th Week. I dislike 5th Week blues. I dislike the ongoing deadlines that pile up for eight weeks. However, I also dislike worrying about money. Worrying about whether or not I can pay all of my rent. Worrying about whether I can buy enough food for the term or whether I should start skipping meals.
When the notion of transforming 5th Week into a reading week was first presented to me, I thought it was an excellent idea, an opportunity to eradicate 5th Week blues once and for all. Yet, upon further thought and a realisation of the negative implications and consequences such a decision entails, I changed my mind.
If we were to keep the current eight week system, leaving one week free for reading, the workload would increase in intensity in the weeks surrounding 5th Week, rendering the term more stressful and the workload seemingly unmanageable for many.
An alternative is to elongate the term, having two blocks of four weeks of teaching framing a reading week. But this also seems to be a damaging idea. Living in Oxford is not cheap – my college charges me £20 per night for accommodation only, meaning that, were an additional week added on to the term, I would have to pay an extra £140 just to have a roof over my head. That’s not counting food, hygiene products or other basic goods. Oxford has worked hard over the past few years to improve access to students regardless of their financial or social backgrounds; to add another week onto the term risks undermining much of the progress made.
As well as this, a reading week raises tutor’s expectations regarding the amount of work that can be completed. Although it is proposed that deadlines are not set for this period, it seems inevitable that many would set deadlines for immediately before, and immediately after, that week. There would be the assumption that essays would improve in quality, or be completed in shorter periods of time, as the reading would hypothetically have been entirely completed. Rather than decreasing stress, we run the risk of increasing it.
Greater pressure would also be placed on tutors, who rely on our vacation time to do their own research and conduct postgraduate teaching. An additional week would disjoint not only our term, but that of our tutors too.
A central component of the argument for a reading week is the notion that it will improve the mental health of students. Certainly, it could potentially reduce stress levels for those seven days and allow for greater social interaction. However, to present it as a solution to mental health issues at places like Oxbridge deeply insults those suffering from mental health issues. You cannot presume that a week with a diminished workload would magically solve what is essentially a much more complex and serious issue. But also, it presumes that the eradication of 5th Week is equivalent to the eradication of the high pressure and high expectations that create the stressful environment that we inhabit.
To replace 5th Week with a reading week is to overlook grossly and to demean many of the deeper issues that make it such a hated time for students. While seeming to provide a solution, all a reading week would do is provide a diversion – an opportunity to ignore the larger issues such as the need for improved welfare provision and academic support
