Dear “The New England Classic” (@theneclassic),
Her Campus BC loves humor just as much as the next writing organization on campus. Our articles can certainly be satiric, whether they are describing the struggle to catch the Newton bus after a long day of classes via gifs or are poking fun at a common trend on campus, such as the infamous “hookup culture”. Whatever it is that we, as writers, chose to write about, we always make sure that our writing and our posts will be pieces that fellow BC students will enjoy and laugh with, but will certainly not be offended by.
Let me just say, NE Classic, that in general we love what you contribute to our campus. You bring a quality of humor and satire that is often lost among the seriousness on the Boston College campus. We are avid readers of the New England Classic as well as Twitter followers. However we are not a fan of how frequently you have criticized many writing organizations on campus, in particular Her Campus BC, but also the Gavel and the Heights, on several pieces. In particular, there have been instances in which tweets were sent from the New England Classic’s Twitter in response to our articles, criticizing them for minor grammar mistakes and essentially belittling the actual content of the article. Humor is one thing; humor at the expense of others is an entirely different one.
In fact, you might be surprised, New England Classic, to know that we are a lot alike. Like the New England Classic, Her Campus BC is not recognized as an official club on campus, our writers volunteer to write despite knowing that their organization receives no support or funding from the university, and above all, our members have a passion to write. For many of us, joining Her Campus BC was a decision fueled by our desire to simply have our voice heard on campus and to talk about things that perhaps aren’t as essential to campus, but that are interesting nonetheless. Yes, we agree that our readers will survive without knowing what nail color polishes are best for the upcoming season, but what we write and what we put on Her Campus BC is a reflection of what we want to talk about and what we feel our readers will want to read too. Criticize us all you want about our “Campus Cutie” articles, but we receive several messages a week by BC students asking to nominate or be a Campus Cutie themselves. I think it’s safe to say we’re doing something right.
What do you have to gain from criticizing us, New England Classic? Did you know that Her Campus National has over 5,000 contributors nationally and receives over 4.7 million monthly unique visitors? Our articles cover hotly debated and interesting topics such as gender norms, issues of race, social problems within the BC culture, and many more. We pride ourselves on being an open outlet for female students to express themselves and their voices on campus. By essentially quipping in with your, “you should proofread and edit this” tweets, you appear to degrade the meaning of our articles as simply a joke. We aren’t a joke, New England Classic. Our writers put in a great amount of time and effort, and each writer has her name on what she writes. We pride ourselves in our work, just as we assume the New England Classic does as well, and simply put: aren’t we all in this together? At the end of the day, we are both just writing organizations on campus. Keep up the humor, New England Classic but please keep us out of it.
HC xo
Her Campus BC
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