Different year, different yearbook

The Yearbook provides a reflection on the school year. Many students take interest in viewing the pictures and features it includes, and recollecting the memories that they bring. This year, however, the yearbook will be different due to the restrictions and regulations that come with the coronavirus pandemic. 

The 2020-2021 theme for the Yearbook is “Together, Virtually.” Rachael Wexler, the editor in chief of the yearbook, explained that the idea was to create a sense of unity throughout the school, even with half of the student population at home.

“We just want to find a way to connect everyone as if we were all still at school,” Wexler said. 

The yearbook will look a little different this year. It won’t be as big as one students got last year, which was 236 pages in length. 

“Most of the [previous yearbooks] were every single sport, every single club, which isn’t happening this year,” Wexler said. “We’re still working on a lot of features to fill that out.”

Such features include a “Dear COVID” section, in which students write a letter directly to COVID. Others include topics such as fashion style changes that occurred over the months that COVID has reigned. 

As for featured people, the yearbook has had a harder time getting them together as compared to a normal school year. 

“We can only depend on who we know, who we already follow. We can’t just find random people because usually everybody would be at school. We’d get pictures of everybody there,” Wexler said. “We just kind of work with our connections and try to figure out a way to fit everybody in.”

On October 5, 2020, Yearbook advisor Ms. Brown sent an email to the student body asking for pictures of themselves at home with the idea that other students would have a chance to be featured in the yearbook. 

“That was also a way to include everyone as well, because if we didn’t know people, that would be a way for them to get themselves in the book if they wanted to be,” Wexler said.

They are still accepting pictures from students. 

“If they’re doing something interesting, like a club or an interesting hobby, we would definitely put that in the book,” Wexler said.

Students who are interested in the possibility of being featured in this year’s yearbook can reach out to the editors or to the yearbook advisor, Chandler Brown. 

Though this year’s book will not be the same as the ones typically expected, it will recollect the year students and staff fought their way through a global pandemic together, virtually.

Photo by Lily Stroup