Coming up with the perfect headline is not always an easy task. And I’m not claiming to have a particular knack for it. I know I’ve written my fair share of duds.
But this headline in The Highlander, the student paper at the University of California, Riverside, about a protest over education is just plain lazy.
Nothing about it distinguishes this protest from any other. At most demonstrations, protesters are upset with the status quo and want change. And there is no mention of what issue they are upset about. If you can’t come up with something sharp, which can be tough, you’ve got to at least get the basics in the headline.
Eric Stoner is a co-founding editor at Waging Nonviolence and an adjunct professor at Saint Joseph's University, New York. His articles have appeared in The Guardian, Mother Jones, Salon, The Nation, Sojourners and In These Times.
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It doesn’t stop at the headline. The lede is just as laughably vague:
This is a good one for the “Onion or real?” file.
It sounds like, for the curious, what they’re complaining about is fee increases.
It appears they can’t even spell ‘solidarity’.
Wow! Great catch. I didn’t even see that one, I was so caught up in the other problems with it.
“[There are] 300 people in a class where the professor reads from lecture slides that aren’t even his and then says the rest is in the books. Fuck that,” said Zozoya.
Stay classy California student.
What the heck is with this sense of entitlement? What’s next, students demand that college is free?