Persuasive Columns

Instigating action through advocate articles published in The Lorian

Persuading Public Opinion 

Click the images to enlarge and you will see a column arguing for military intervention in Syria, circa 2014. One could categorize this column as pointless and irrelevant, because who am I to be suggesting anything? And it's a point I agree with, this column and topic were an exercise in futility. However, such a categorization misses the larger purpose of this writing; a college campus is insulated from the "real world", which is intentional, because it allows students the space necessary for intellectual growth--an earnest debate of the happenings in the world being a primary way for such growth to occur. 

In this column, I encourage my fellow DuHawks to think about what America could do to help over there. American foreign policy is an impractical thing to care about, so many students, and people, don't. Yet, core to our responsibilities as citizens are to be knowledgeable and active participants in the democratic process. So, while this column may be an exercise in futility, it was also an exercise in citizenship. 

Persuading Public Action

Click the images to enlarge and you will see a column making a plea for students to vote for Hillary Clinton for President. As opposed to the other article, this one regards an action people can take, not just an opinion position. It was a pretty popular opinion for college students to just not vote, because a "choice between two evils still results in evil". I found this notion repulsive due to it's abdication of citizen responsibility, so I did my best to persuade people otherwise.

 There were two goals I had: get people to vote Hillary and get people to be politically active. I did my best to show how one fit into the other, and I hope I did that. Regardless, it was really important for me, personally, to try to light a fire in readers, because I really do believe that a good citizen is a prerequisite for good government, for only through good citizens voting can decent politicians control government. Thus, the case I made was not solely vote for Hillary, but to look past the election and into the future--to borrow from Ghandi, I was asking readers to be the change they wanted to see in the world through political involvement.