Someone recently asked me why anyone should read my opinion columns. The exchange made me question everything that I had ever written in the past year. Who am I to say that the Co-Op is expensive without having taken a single economics class? Why should I be the one to criticise our obsessions with exclusivity while obsessing over a fraternity myself?
I think the answer is simple. The impulse for opinion writing is not rooted in entitlement or intellectual superiority, but in the essential drive to mobilize shared, quiet observation into active discourse. We write because necessary conversations, whether neglected or widely held, require a catalyst to move from silent thought to voiced engagement.
The student newspaper is a special place to voice opinions because everyone brings an important, lived experience to it. Each of us has a say in what is best for this place. It is those small, personal vantage points that make each individual opinion here important. Of course, I might not rush to read a take on campus culture from someone who has been here for no more than four weeks, but that’s fine — awareness of your own inexperience is part of what makes a good writer.
I am not blind to the stereotype that the opinion writer is a pretentious, pseudointellectual know-it-all, and maybe that’s true more often than I’d like to believe. Yet, at the risk of sounding self-righteous, I will say that writing for opinion takes some courage. The line between foolishness and courage is thin, and yet there is an irreplaceable high to attaching your name to something that you believe in, especially when you know it might spark disagreement.
In my personal experience, it has been saddening to see the number of times writers here at The Dartmouth choose not to write about Greek life, politics or the administration, in fear that expressing their opinion, or even doing news coverage, will put them at a disadvantage in the future. These concerns are completely valid, and not thinking those through are probably as much a sign of foolishness as it is of courage. There is a good chance I will regret a lot of what I write now, but knowing that my piece sparked something is enough fuel to keep going.
Change here is real. Dartmouth is small enough that a single article can spark something. Either a conversation in a classroom, a change in policy or, at the very least, a moment of reflection. The Dartmouth’s opinion section has always started dialogues that matter. In 2013, a series of opinion pieces about sexual assault at Dartmouth sparked campus wide conversations and helped push the administration to adopt new sexual misconduct policies. More recently, a series of pieces in 2021 and 2022 that called for better mental health resources following several student deaths led to expanded counseling staff, changes to leave-of-absence policies and the creation of Dartmouth Cares mental health campaign. At the very least, honest writing about Dartmouth always has, and always will, spark conversation.
We need an opinion section, not to let the pseudointellectuals have a ball, but to reinforce that idea that students on campus do have a voice. This is a voice that is nonviolent, a voice that is non-distruptive and a voice that simply trusts the power of the written word. As long as this is a place where words and ideas can still move something, I’m not shutting up any time soon.
Opinion articles represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.
