High school has a tendency to turn a truly exciting endeavor like writing into a hellscape of five paragraph essays and passionless rhetorical analyses. So, as a freshman arriving at the University of Connecticut for the first time this fall, many of you may be repulsed by the idea of joining our newspaper and willingly submitting yourself to additional writing assignments.
We understand. Really, we do. We were all in your shoes not long ago.
But we encourage you to think about the newspaper as a wholly different kind of writing than the soul-crushing conformity of high school. At The Daily Campus, writing is freedom of expression at its most potent.
In the Opinion section, you can write about pretty much anything. Want to argue that the government shouldn’t exist? Or that college should be free? Or that Eli Whitney is the root cause of the Civil War? All ideas, out-of-the-box or in, are welcome here.
In the Life section, you can cover events and deposit your pop culture hot takes. Do you want to go to and review Hasan Minhaj’s show (for free)? Do you think Young Thug is the most important musician of the 21st century (a factually correct opinion)? Do you think #HotGirlSummer is this generation’s British Invasion? Creativity and flair are the name of the game in Life.
In the Sports section, you can cover the Greatest Women’s Basketball Team on Earth (and plenty of other excellent teams). Get up close and personal with future WNBA, NBA, NFL, MLS and NWSL stars while learning the ins and outs of sports journalism. Go to games for free. Chop it up with local sports reporting legends like Dom Amore. There are few colleges in the country with a Sports section like ours.
In the News section, you can uncover scandals and unlock your investigative side. Want to write about students taking pictures with severed heads (true story)? Want to interview UConn officials and learn the ropes of journalism? Want to write articles which uncover the seedy underbelly of Storrs Center parking policies (also a true story)? All that, and more, in News.
And if you really, really don’t want to write, the Photo and Video sections will help you embrace your visual side. We couldn’t do it without the extraordinarily talented and charismatic photographers and videographers who make the paper pop every day.
So don’t think of The Daily Campus as just another writing assignment: It’s a blank canvas for you to paint your passion, ideas and curiosity. And perhaps most importantly, there’s a good chance you’ll meet some of your best friends in the bar-turned-office we call home. So join us next Sunday night (and hopefully for many Sundays thereafter).
Harry Zehner is the opinion editor for The Daily Campus. He can be reached via email at harry.zehner@uconn.edu.
