People always complain about The Dartmouth (myself included, which might be a bit hypocritical since I wrote last summer, "Today marks the last day I will ever complain about The Dartmouth"). However, there are very few sections that are criticized as frequently as the opinion section. I cannot pass blame on my fellow columnists, nor our editors (that would be both easy and nonsensical). The problem lies not with the staff involved, but with the search process itself.
I do not think that having freshman as staff columnists in their first term at Dartmouth is a very good idea. After all, freshmen with just three weeks on the mean streets of Hanover know barely enough about the College to find their classes, let alone develop a deeper understanding of Dartmouth that only comes about with time.
Yet six of this term's 14 columnists come from the Class of 2010. Now compare that figure with only two sophomores, two juniors and four seniors. Perhaps if the distribution were relatively even, or slightly tilted towards upperclassmen, this would not be such a problem. But since columnists are generally hired during their first term on campus, and like any other organization on campus, the opinion page has its fair share of drop-outs, we are left with a disproportionate amount of freshmen and far too few upperclassmen.
At real newspapers in the real world, columnists generally come from some sort of journalistic background, whether as reporters at larger newspapers or columnists at either smaller or more specialized publications. They work their way up until they know enough and have meaningful things to say, and are then given a column. They are experts (or at least knowledgeable enough) in their chosen fields, and have learned from experience what issues are important and what are logical solutions to approaching them.
To the untrained eye, this is a far too logical way to go about the editorial process. One would think that the Washington Post (just to pick a newspaper) would not ask a reporter with two weeks in Washington to write columns about the inner workings and issues of our nation's capital, just as one cannot expect freshmen to understand the inner workings of the College.
Perhaps I approach the opinion page differently because I did not join until late into my sophomore year (and even then, with trepidation), but I do not think this is a hard problem to fix. One solution would be for The Dartmouth to ask older reporters to move to the opinion page (if they felt they had something to say).
Another would be instituting a more targeted search process. We can even find an example of this at our dearly beloved College. Recently the pages of this newspaper have been filled with information about the dean of the College search committee.
Why couldn't The Dartmouth do the exact same thing when looking for columnists? The search would of course be substantially smaller, but it is reasonable to say the quality of the opinion section would become much better. Between these two solutions, it would be easy to add enough upperclassmen columnists to fill the opinion page.
I could just be tired of being lectured on Dartmouth's lack of mascots or affirmative action or Parkhurst or diversity (I could go on all day) by freshmen whose Dartmouth experience has only just begun, or maybe it is the natural distrust upperclassmen have for freshmen, but I am sick of opinion columns and columnists with nothing to say and plenty of space given to them to say it. There have been plenty of thought-provoking and creative columns put forth by both staff and guest columnists over the past few years, but I have little trouble saying that very few of these columns were written by first-year students here at Dartmouth.
While I may keep reading every column in search of a rare gem (and due to too much free time in the morning), many of my fellow upperclassmen immediately ignore columns written by freshmen due to a lack of credibility.
It is time for The Dartmouth to rethink the way columnists are chosen and recruited if they want to both raise their journalistic standards and make sure people read the opinion page.
