By Hannah Webb | Focus Editor
If there’s one thing The Lariat’s opinion section has proven over its 125 years, it’s that society has never been short on thoughts — or feelings — about the world around them. Some wrote about cafeteria meat portions. Some wrote about gender bias in classrooms. One even wrote from a New York prison. Together, they form a paper trail of conviction, curiosity and, occasionally, chaos.
The opinion section officially began running columns in the late 1970s, but letters from readers came long before that. They were the original comment section — only typed, mailed and published for everyone to see. In 1978, a student named Bryan Munson sent a letter blasting Penland Dining Hall’s “chef’s salad” for its suspicious lack of actual meat. “The amount of ham in a chef’s is so minimal,” he wrote. “I doubt that it keeps the rats alive!”
Two days later, he followed up with a victory lap: Penland had responded, expanded the portions and restored his faith in campus dining. The people’s voice had been heard — through lettuce and protest alike.
Not every letter to The Lariat came from a dorm room. In 1974, one arrived from the Attica Correctional Facility, beginning with the unforgettable: “I am presently serving twenty years in prison.” Edwin William Kirschner wasn’t here to complain about dining hall rations — unless you count the metaphorical kind. He was looking for a pen pal, a correspondent and maybe even a friend.
His note turned The Lariat into something bigger than a campus newspaper for a moment: a bridge between Waco and the wider, weirder world. Who needs Twitter when you’ve got the Waco post office and a dream?
By 1997, that bridge carried Lisa Zapata’s column, “Women should not fear speaking up in class.” Zapata’s piece was thoughtful, sharp and deeply personal, calling out the subtle ways women were silenced or overlooked in classrooms.
Zapata remembered being praised for her neat cursive while boys were pushed to improve their ideas. “Little boys may have received all the attention in 2nd grade,” she wrote. “But now that we don’t have to be afraid that they will pull our ponytails if we correct them, I would suggest we do just that.” It’s one of those lines that still lands today, as both an observation and a challenge.
Fast-forward a few decades, and The Lariat opinion page still balances the profound with the peculiar. In 2013, The Editorial Board endorsed “fart-filtering underwear” — a true story that deserves both admiration and maybe, a little regret. More recently, in 2024, a column ran urging readers to live whimsically and eat more cheese. The topics may vary wildly, but the instinct behind them hasn’t changed: to make people think, laugh or argue a little.
That’s the beauty of an opinion page. It’s the place where the paper stops reporting on what’s happening and starts reflecting on what it means. It’s where students test their voices, sometimes awkwardly, sometimes brilliantly, but always honestly. It’s where readers discover that words — even about a chef salad — can change something, whether it’s cafeteria policy or how a community sees itself.
Across twelve and a half decades, The Lariat’s opinion writers have argued, apologized, inspired and occasionally embarrassed themselves in print. But every piece, from Zapata’s call to speak up to Munson’s salad saga, carries the same heartbeat: Baylor students believing that what they think matters.
That belief — that words have weight, that conviction belongs in ink — is what makes the opinion section indispensable. It’s where Baylor has worked out who it is, one column at a time. And if the past 125 years are any indication, the next great debate might not start in a courtroom or a classroom — but right here, in the letters and columns that remind us what it means to care enough to write.
