If you’ve made it to page four of The Campus or stumbled upon this photo-less page of our website, chances are that you care deeply about what’s going on at Allegheny College. A newspaper is a remarkable resource to learn about on-campus happenings — I’ll let the news and features sections speak for themselves — but the opinion section’s role as a forum for informed public discussion is perhaps just as important as the other sections’ work to keep our community informed.
Students, administrators, faculty, staff, alumni and prospective students all read The Campus, so, perhaps counterintuitively, what you say here in the opinion section has the potential to reach the eyeballs (and hopefully brains!) of a much wider slice of the Allegheny community than any other mode of communication. When you’d like to speak to the Gators, the opinion section is the right swamp for your words.
To enter the swamp, however, you need one essential piece of equipment: a structure for your ideas. A really good opinion essay isn’t just a couple paragraphs about what you think and why. Just like other genres, it’s become its own art form with a long history that results in some established conventions depending on the subject and focus. Most of the fun in reading and writing opinion essays comes from well-crafted sentences that participate in or rebel against these traditions that govern how audiences expect an author to present their opinion on a specific topic.
The cold, hard, soggy truth is that five-paragraph argumentative essays are like pool floaties — great for learning how to stay afloat in clear and shallow pools, but by the time you start writing in the muddy waters of the public lens, there are better, faster, cooler vehicles available to transport ideas. This article is intended to introduce you, the writer, to some different types of opinion pieces we’d love to publish.
Criticism
Not to be confused with reviews! When people read reviews, they want to know: is it thumbs up, or thumbs down? Criticism (which means “analytical” here, not “judgy”) doesn’t really bother with rating how good or bad something is. Instead, it tries to examine some aspect of human culture on a deeper level. Subjects may often be the same sorts of things that usually get reviewed, but may include more conceptual topics like what Spotify Wrapped tells us about our cultural thirst for order. There’s also often less pressure with criticism to cover well-known subjects or those that just came into existence. If you’ve been searching for a chance to analyze the sociopolitical dimensions of your dad’s favorite bar band’s song lyrics, opportunity has come knocking.
Political commentary
Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that political commentary can only be gripes about how a politician/policy/scandal is ripping the region/nation/world apart. In fact, there’s actually been so much griping about American politics in the last decade that you’re probably better off doing something else entirely. Maybe you can advise a solution or call readers’ attention to an institutional, local or regional issue that’s been overlooked. You might explain how or why something went down the way it did or focus on some other element of governance and public life that’s got little to do with political parties.
We live in an era of political polarization, which means that simply rehashing your side’s usual talking points in an argumentative piece isn’t useful, and frankly, it’s not original either. If your commentary sounds like something a presidential nominee might say at a campaign rally or on the debate stage, the people you disagree with have already tuned out.
Advice
Think of the person you look up to most in the world — got ‘em? Okay. Keep thinking.
It’s likely that person is someone you trust, someone you want to be more like, someone whose presence maybe even makes you feel a little awe-struck and nervous. You want this person to see you at your very best, and you really want them to think you’re pretty cool. Now imagine that this person is asking you for advice.
Gulp. You don’t know anything! They know so much! So you’re frantically, wildly, desperately hoping that they’ll ask you about something, anything, that you’re an expert in. What would you hope they would ask?
Your answer is probably a good topic for an advice column.
The thing about advice is that we hear it all day long — at college, it’s so pervasive that it’s probably part of what makes the hallways of the dorm buildings smell like that. Most advice stinks because the people who are offering it usually think you’ve done something stupid. Maybe you have, but you really don’t want to feel like it — not when you’re asking for help. You want the person giving you advice to offer warmth, respect, and recognition that the opportunity to be listened to is one of the greatest gifts a person can give another. When your reader gives you the chance to shape their perspective, be their biggest champion. You should always write advice like you’re speaking with someone you genuinely think rocks.
When writing advice, be humble. Stick to what you know well, and to what you know works, even if it’s unconventional. Luckily, this is the opinion page, not a Pinterest board of motivational quotes, which means we can drop the pretense: life is so, so strange. Good advice can be, too.
Process and how-to guides
Step 1: Open your laptop. Stare at the blank screen and wonder why in the world you agreed to write for a student newspaper.
Step 2: Close the laptop; say to yourself “This is a problem for tomorrow me.”
I’m joking here, if only for illustrative purposes. In a process article, you walk your reader step by step through a series of actions that, when conducted correctly, lead to some kind of desired goal. The opinion here is that it’s your process. It’s a series of events that you’ve made your own through trial and error, by honing your skill, and by clearly communicating how to replicate your success. Ideally, that unique process isn’t something widely known or practiced by others (which is why you should publish it).
For example, I’d love for you to write an article with a headline like “Want a mullet this long and luscious? Start meditating. Then get new clippers,” or “How I survived the Baldwin Hall norovirus outbreak of 2026.” These titles would probably lead to excellent process articles because they rely on the writer’s unique experience and expertise in the topic. They also promise more than a little personality thrown in with the directions.
Travel writing
When you think about it, it’s kind of weird that people like traveling so much. Many mammals are content to spend their entire lives within a few miles of where they were born, and even migratory animals often trace the exact same paths as their ancestors, over and over and over again. Traveling is expensive, hard to plan, sometimes dangerous and frequently disappointing — so why do people crave it at all? When we invest so much time and effort into something so risky, what on earth are we thinking we’ll get out of it?
Good travel writing is fun to read because it pushes beyond the stunning views or nightmare motel to ask why we (as in you, the writer, but also human beings as a species) find value in the activity itself. Why travel? Why here? Why now? For your answers to be rewarding, you may want to introduce some kind of conflict that makes these questions hard to resolve. For example: You loved your dog. Your dog loved your car. Then he died. Now you have to take a road trip, and you’ve never missed him more than when you look at that empty passenger seat. A good opinion story could show us how to find meaning in that.
As with personal narratives, travel writing relies on your ability to recount a story. Detail, description, and context are everything. Give your reader the who/what/when/where/why, and give it to us as early in the narrative as possible. If you’re planning to visit somewhere with the intent to write about it later, try carrying a notebook where you can jot down observations throughout the day. Little details make big differences in how vivid your story is. A place is shaped by its history, so including bits of well-researched information about your destination’s past, present, and future can bring it to life. Bon voyage!
The Campus holds contributing writers’ meetings at 8 p.m. on Mondays in room 303 of the Henderson Campus Center. Section editors can also be reached via email with story ideas. Letters to the editor should be addressed to [email protected].
