Graduate Student Op-Ed Competition

The first Graduate Student Op-Ed Competition was held in Fall 2024. Read about the competition and the awardees here: FSU graduate students compete in first-ever op-ed essay competition - Florida State University News

Learning to communicate with nonexpert audiences is a vital skill for graduate students to develop. As academics and professionals, graduate students work on topics that have public interest and components that are timely and related to current events. By participating in the competition, you will practice the necessary skills to link your research to current events and to communicate clearly with the public. This competition will also help advertise the important research, work in action, and experiences of FSU graduate students to the broader community. Five winners will be chosen, who will each receive a $500 research grant to support their research, education, or professional development.

All currently enrolled (during fall 2025) FSU graduate students are eligible. There are no restrictions on discipline or degree program. Please note, last year's finalists are not eligible to compete this year, but previous honorable mentions are eligible (though they are expected to submit substantially different op-eds than what they previously submitted).

To submit an op-ed for the competition, you must register to participate by October 10. Only registered participants will receive the link to submit their op-eds. Op-eds are due for submission by October 17, 2025. 

All submitted op-eds will go through an initial screening to make sure they adhere to the rules outlined below. Those that meet the formatting requirements will then be distributed to a team of judges drawn from different areas of expertise. Every op-ed will be read by at least two judges, who will each assign a point total (20 points maximum). The judges will review each submission for the following:

• Submission clearly establishes the topic’s importance and remains focused on a single issue? (5 points)
• Submission makes strong use of supporting evidence (quotes, experts, data, citations, etc)? (5 points)
• Submission’s language is clear, concise, free of jargon, and appropriate to the topic? (5 points)
• Submission is persuasive and compelling? (5 points)

A strong op-ed should do more than explain an issue. It should take a stance, provide a call to action, or argue in favor of a particular policy or position. 

Best Organized Op-Ed

Awarded to the op-ed that demonstrates exceptional structure and clarity throughout, following a standard journalistic structure with a compelling opening, clear thesis, and logical progression.

Best Explanation of Complicated Subject

Awarded to the op-ed that discusses a complicated/complex topic in a clear, understandable manner appropriate for a general reading audience.

Best Use of Evidence

Awarded to the op-ed that most effectively uses evidence (experts, data, cited sources) to support its arguments.

Most Persuasive Argument

Awarded to the op-ed that presents the most compelling and convincing argument, effectively persuading the reader of its viewpoint.

Best Call to Action

Awarded to the op-ed that provides the most powerful and inspiring call to action, motivating readers to engage or take specific steps based on the piece.

Please read and follow the rules and expectations for this competition. Op-ed submissions that do not adhere to the outlined rules will not be accepted for judging.

• Submitted op-eds must have a maximum word count of 600, inclusive of any captions for images/figures.
• Op-eds must be your own original work. No plagiarized or AI-generated submissions will be eligible.
• Op-eds must be written in standard journalism format, with short paragraphs, a strong, informative opening (or “lede” and “nut graf”), and following the “inverted pyramid” structure. Refer to these guides for more information on journalistic style:
  • Grammerly.com “How to Write a News Article”
  • George Mason University Writing Center “News Writing Fundamentals”
• Sources and citations should be included in the article. Use embedded links to cite your sources. No footnotes or “works cited” list should be included.
• Submitted op-eds must be your original work.
• While “timeliness” is an important factor when pitching or submitting op-eds for publication, for the purposes of this competition, op-eds can be responding to/referencing events that happened anytime during the 2025 calendar year.
• Submissions must be in PDF format and following the naming convention “LastName_FirstName_OpEd.PDF” (for example, “McCall_Keith_OpEd.pdf”).

The Conversation is a great resource for learning what an effective op-ed does. The platform hosts op-eds written by university professors, scientists, activists, and other experts. 

For guides on how to write in journalism style:

• Grammerly.com “How to Write a News Article”
• George Mason University Writing Center “News Writing Fundamentals”

The op-ed below was written by Dr. Keith McCall, assistant director of the Office of Graduate Fellowships and Awards, when he was a graduate student in 2017. It was published in the Houston Cougar, the student newspaper of the University of Houston. You can access the published version at this link.

Please note that this example is 735 words, and submissions for the Graduate Student Op-Ed Competition are limited to 600 words. As an example, however, this piece demonstrates use of embedded links for citations, adheres to journalistic style/formatting, and addressed a timely topic when published.

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A recent letter to the editor suggested that removing Confederate memorials risks erasing history. This misunderstands the history of the statues and misrepresents the relationship between culture and politics.

White supremacy has never been a fringe ideology in the United States. Confederate monuments commemorate a war fought to create a slaveholding republic founded, according to Confederate leadership, “upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition.”

Had these statues been erected in 1861, they almost certainly would have explicitly memorialized the foundational racial ideology of the Confederacy.

But these statues were not erected during or immediately after the war. Instead, they were erected during an era in which white Americans, north and south, reconciled their differences through a national program of white supremacy.

The statues are not neutral markers of historical facts. Like many aspects of material culture in public spaces, Confederate statues served a political purpose. Erected during the era of Jim Crow, the statues helped create a cultural landscape supportive of the legal and social structure of racial segregation.

The statues stood in public spaces as physical manifestations of white supremacy. They stood outside courthouses where black people failed to find justice. They stood outside polling places as literacy tests and poll taxes purged black citizens from voter registration rolls.

And they did so under the direction of powerful cultural groups and with the backing of local governments.

The Spirit of the Confederacy statue in Houston, for instance, was dedicated in 1908 by the United Daughters of the Confederacy. Far from a fringe group, the UDC’s efforts to memorialize the Lost Cause myth of the Civil War had a powerful impact. Along with the many statues the group funded and erected, the UDC shaped the narrative of the Civil War in popular textbooks, rejecting any interpretation of the war that was “unjust to the South.”

The UDC’s interpretation of the Civil War was bolstered in academics by Columbia University historian William A. Dunning and his students, whose interpretation of Reconstruction held that freed people were unfit for voting and holding office, a narrative that helped legitimate Ku Klux Klan terrorism as a necessary reaction to emancipation.

In 1935, W. E. B. Du Bois, commenting on Dunning’s interpretation and the political ramifications of scholarship and education, wrote that “one fact and one alone explains the attitude of most recent writers toward Reconstruction: they cannot conceive Negroes as men.”

In other words, the UDC and the Dunning school perpetuated interpretations of history that justified slavery, KKK violence and white supremacy. Statues erected by groups that promoted this version of history cannot be separated from the racial ideology they supported.

During the 1960s, historians really began to challenge the Dunning school’s interpretation of slavery and Reconstruction. This scholarship fought hard against the preferred narratives of cultural groups like the UDC, and it only slowly trickled into textbooks and popular narratives of the Civil War.

Indeed, contrary to the author’s suggestion that removing these statues stifles debate, the movement is in many ways the culmination of more than 50 years of critical historical research, debate and public activism that has worked to dismantle the Lost Cause myth of the Confederacy.

The current desire among many to remove these monuments reflects not an effort to ignore the bad parts of history. Quite the opposite, it emerges from a drawn-out and at times painful process of facing the ugly parts of our history. It emerges from a recognition of the purpose those statues served for the groups that erected them, namely to symbolize a racial order.

That the statues have now become rallying points for a resurgence of mainstream white supremacy only confirms that these statues served that purpose. They stood silently in public spaces, waiting to lend their weight when racist ideologies needed an anchor.

Does the removal of statues eliminate racism? No. But white supremacist ideologies should no longer command a physical presence in our public spaces.

A critical engagement with history would recognize that culture shifts as a society’s values and needs shift. A segregated society needed memorials that justified its racial framework. A society striving for inclusion needs a different cultural landscape.

History is the process of change over time. Denying that change by demanding cultural landmarks remains static is more ahistorical than removing a few statues.