Verbum Ultimum: Construct Your Criticism

environmental justice initiatives as unfair policies that prioritize certain races over others instead of prioritizing locations with the most severe environmental damage. Democrats’ environmental messaging can dodge accusations of pursuing a leftist agenda by highlighting the popularity and widespread benefts of Biden’s individual climate policies, as well as by assuring voters that consumer choice won’t be forcefully taken from them.

To spotlight Biden’s environmental policies as benefting the average American, Democrats should call attention to his fruitful solar panel policies. Solar panels are very popular, with 86% of Republicans and Republican-leaning voters and 93% of moderate Republicans supporting an increase in the number of solar panel farms in 2019. The poll’s results show Biden’s environmental policies do refect the average American’s political values. The Biden administration’s eforts are on track to triple the amount of domestic solar panel manufacturing by 2024, decreasing reliance on China’s solar panel technology and creating American jobs. Both of these are priorities for many Republicans. Biden’s solar panel policies will also lead to over a billion dollars in savings on energy bills across six states via a new pilot program, which Democrats can advertise as his successful work to decrease bills for the average American.

The right messaging can convince more Republicans that environmental policies help the economy. According to a 2020 survey analysis by Resources for the Future, 52% of Republicans think policies to reduce global warming do not harm the U.S. economy, and 82% of Republicans think the U.S. government doing more to reduce global warming would not impact their chances of working a good-paying job. These statistics show Republicans are open to be persuaded of the economic benefts of environmental policies.

Furthermore, companies are building new steel mills, battery plants and electric vehicle factories — all under Biden’s environmental policies. New clean energy jobs, like solar and wind energy technicians, are also being created. Biden’s Infation Reduction Act is expected to create over half a million jobs, most of which are in blue-collar industries. Moreover, Biden’s American Jobs Plan — part of his Build Back Better program — is expected to create more than a million green jobs per year. The majority of those jobs will be high-paying and will not require college degrees. The law has spurred jobs across the economy in sectors as broad as construction, manufacturing, transportation, distribution and healthcare.

Most importantly, Democratic messaging surrounding these new jobs should focus on testimonies from new green workers, instead of entrusting bureaucrats to trumpet information on Biden’s climate policy successes. Recently, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg earned criticism for wearing dress shoes while visiting the train derailment site in East Palestine, drawing a sharp contrast between the secretary and the muddy working boots of the workers surrounding him. Democrats’ increasing association as the party of coastal elites, white-collar workers and college degree-holders alienates the rural and blue-collar voters who make up much of the Republican base. Relying on highly-educated bureaucrats or wealthy coastal elite politicians to spread Democratic messaging does not help the image of a party whose leadership already appears out of touch to many blue-collar workers.

As the March 24 deadline for professors to input winter grades rolled around last week, students checked DartHub with anticipation to see how they performed in their courses. But even as students received letter grades denoting their overall performance in their classes, not all of them had access to the fnal papers and examinations that supposedly fnalized the marks on their transcript.

Unfortunately, this was nothing out of the ordinary. Collectively, the members of this editorial board have written lengthy essays which were never seen again once submitted and have agonized over exam questions without ever learning what the correct answers were. On occasion, we have been shocked by a grade that was lower than anticipated, and other times we have had our requests for feedback on our fnal assignments go unfulflled or outright denied — and we know we are not alone.

Without easy access to the feedback on our cumulative assignments, it is easy for students to be confused and frustrated by the overall grade they received, and it is difcult for students to learn from their fnals. Above all else, Dartmouth is a place to learn, and the College must take steps to ensure that its students are able to walk away from their courses with as comprehensive an understanding of the material as possible. That is just not possible when the assignments we work hardest on efectively disappear. We ask the College to mandate that undergraduate professors return graded fnal papers and examinations to students with corrections and comments on or before the designated deadline for fnal grades.

In PSYC 01: “Introductory Psychology,” students learn that the brain retains information best when it makes an error –– not when it does something right. This is why certain study strategies, like copying or rewriting notes, are inefective: They don’t test the brain’s understanding, and as a consequence, the brain does not take note when it makes a mistake. Conversely, strategies that involve information retrieval, such as fash cards, are more challenging, and thus, more efective. Like fash cards, examinations and graded papers challenge students to retrieve the information they have learned, and give students the chance to learn from their errors. In theory, fnal examinations should be the ultimate pedagogical tool to ensure that students retain the information they spent the last ten weeks learning. But if many students never see the errors they make, how can they learn from them?

Professors are meticulous and deliberate in the way they design their courses. They spend hours preparing lectures, writing exams, curating readings and designing assignments that best test their students’ understanding of the material. So it strikes us as odd that they would deprive their students of this fnal learning opportunity. Why have students sit for a stressful exam or write a long fnal paper, only to never tell them how they did?

This is not to say that no professors return fnal grades with corrections. Many professors return exams and essays with corrections and feedback in a timely manner, without any prompting. On the other hand, some professors do not ofer opportunities for students to view their fnals with corrections at all. Others say they will give back graded fnals with corrections but put the responsibility on students to request to see their grades and corrections themselves. Some will only allow students to see test results in person, which can pose logistical difculties for students who leave campus before their exams are graded. The lack of consistency between each professor and course is frustrating, to say the least. Although putting the responsibility to request corrections on students may take some load of professors, the burden should not be on students to fght for feedback — and this should no longer be the norm. A guarantee that professors will return grades would not only help more students to learn from the feedback, but it would also hold professors accountable for grading fnal exams fairly and accurately.

We understand that a mandate requiring professors to return fnal exam feedback may seem to place additional strain on them, but if professors are already spending time reading and grading all fnal exams thoroughly, then it should not add signifcantly more time to return those comments or notes to students. And if professors are worried about providing feedback for the volume of papers or exams they must grade, then that may be a sign to professors that they should only be assigning work they feel capable of assessing attentively and returning in a timely manner.

The College espouses a “culture of collaboration” between students and faculty in its own mission statement; but when students are kept in the dark about their fnal performance, the College is failing to deliver on its promise. Feedback is an indispensable pedagogical tool, and it is time the College treated it as such.

The editorial board consists of opinion staf columnists, the opinion editors, the executive editors and the editor-in-chief.

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