Why do you read the Ops Section of the Daily? Really — why? As I rush to meet my last deadline as a Daily columnist, I have been looking through the columnist archives. Jumping from writer to writer has made me realize that between us columnists and the editorial board, we all have very different ideas of what is supposed to be on this page. And I’m positive that you, dear reader, have an opinion all your own. In a world where we can get information almost effortlessly and get a feel for the student pulse via Facebook and blogs, what’s the purpose of an ops section?

Columnists tend to view themselves as “personalities,” with four loose categories of style: the shit-stirrers, the storytellers, the political commentators, and the jaded observers. Sure, we fluctuate from week to week, experimenting with different roles and voices, but at the end of the day, each of us inevitably returns to one of these vantage points. Kat tells a story. Darren stirs the shit. Andy used to be our politics guy. Chris is our sardonic observer. And so it goes, each columnist sharing his or her persona and outlook, one self-aware profile photo at a time.

Compare this to the edit board, who use anonymity to step up on a soap box and try to pump some kind of feeling into an apathetic student body. Their articles can also be split into four loose categories: student happenings, passing judgment on new (or old) school programs, national politics, and space fillers. (As someone who has written an op-ed belonging to the latter category, I’ll own up and take the hit: I wrote about fun things to do on the weekend. It was a dark moment in my life. We’re human, it happens.)

So, what’s supposed to be happening in this section of the paper? Is the goal to entertain you while you munch your Smart Start? Should we take a stand, piss you off, and give you something to write about on the “online comment feature”? Should we be a blog? A formal argumentative essay? I don’t think that anyone has ever asked the readers what they want to read. I’d like to know. Just don’t tell me that you want more sports, because that will break my heart.

What role can this page fill that isn’t accomplished via either a social-networking site or a national news source? There is so much information available to challenge the purpose of a college newspaper, let alone an Ops Section. One argument is that the Daily provides quality control — writers are chosen and articles are edited before they go to print. But blogs have built-in quality controls, as well — the most viewed ones, presumably the most interesting, rise to the top, the bad ones sink to the bottom. So what’s our niche? How do we stay pertinent? The formal op-ed section is a recent invention, starting in 1970 at The New York Times — time’s not up yet, is it?

I spied on some other college papers to try to find the fountain of op-ed youth. Thankfully, they are groping around, as well. The ops page at the Harvard Crimson reads like a neurotic co-ed’s diary. Monday’s signed pieces were titled: “Finding Happiness at Harvard,” “On Doing Well,” “The Best Four Years of Your Life?,” “Believing In Your Thesis,” “‘Holding On’ Through Harvard,” and “Shifting the Race Debate.” These titles speak for themselves.

On the other end of the spectrum, in 2005, University of Pennsylvania’s The Daily Pennsylvanian was considered by Newsweek to have a slick business model, and by all financial accounts, the paper is doing pretty well for itself. But its ops page reads like a business journal. It’s well-informed, clearly structured, and — erm — boring as hell.

When I asked one of my friends what he would like to read, he said, “Stereotypes. Give me more stereotypes. I want the jock. I want the Rasta-guy. I want the indie girl who hates life. Let me read about them and make fun of them at lunch. I want to be entertained.”

I don’t know how I feel about this idea. I have to admit, we columnists are an eerily homogeneous bunch — put our column pictures together and the albedo is startling. But if we want to get more viewpoints on the Ops Page, we need a greater pool of applicants from which to choose. Mention the Daily at a SLAC meeting, and you get knowing glances and jaded stares, not a line of applicants. I would sort of like to read a first-hand account of the hunger strike. Or why someone thinks that Roe v. Wade should be reversed. But diversity is different from stereotypes (clearly). Making the sole purpose of this page into a textual song and dance seems like a cheap solution. I agree that more diversity on the ops page would be appreciated, but I want to learn something or get worked up from reading an op-ed, not be mindlessly entertained via expected cliches.

Ultimately, we are at a crucial time in the direction of college papers, and ops sections in particular. A communication professor recently told me offhandedly that the only current purpose of a college paper is to train writers for when they have something to say, and to be ready for commentary in case another Azia Kim happens. For all other cases, their purpose is waning. This can’t be true — can it?

Jackie Bernstein can be reached at jaber@stanford.edu.