Wanna Change the Status Quo Sometime?

In my humanities course, Rhetoric, we have been studying the following question, "How can we use rhetoric to change the status quo?." We did this by digging deeper into the different rhetorical techniques. To answer this question, some local influential Chicagoans came to talk with us: Troy LaRaviere and Ugo Okere. Both of these men used their platforms to try to challenge and change the status quo. LaRaviere did so by publishing an opinion editorial (op-ed) to the Chicago Sun-Times calling out CPS policies and Rham Emmanual's administration's treatment of school administrators and Okere did so through his aldermanic campaign. After reading LaRaviere's op-ed, we were motivated to produce our own. Before doing so, we researched what makes an effective op-ed. If you are not too sure what an op-ed is, to simply put it, it is the commentary opposite page of the editorial page. In the process of making our op-ed, we were asked to respond to a timely issue of significance to us. The topic of my op-ed is the mass repatriation of Burundian refugees. Below is my op-ed.



Overall, I enjoyed the way my project turned out. Even though I already had some knowledge of the issue that I wrote about, a lot of research still went into it. It was nice being able to choose a topic of significance to me because it was something that I was able to write about passionately. Some challenges I had were putting my opinion on such a difficult topic and being afraid of sounding politically incorrect. At the end of the day, I created a piece I'm proud of and a piece I hope to see published in the New York Times.