ASWC should think twice about funding a Whitman yearbook at any price. Why? Because Whitman students essentially make their own yearbooks. Modern technology and the diversity of student life make the concept of a singular Whitman yearbook almost obsolete.
A yearbook is a record of student experience, one that relies primarily on photography to document important events, activities and campus experiences. Modern students record, document and archive their own student experience with digital cameras, external hard drives and websites like Facebook and Flickr. We take pictures of our friends, our parties, our clubs, our vacations and our weekend ski trips. If we forget to take the pictures ourselves we get the photos from our friends.
Most graduating students thus have a visual record of their Whitman experience that is specific and personal. A yearbook simply cannot compete with the personal relevance of these records.
The primary disadvantage of a yearbook is that student experience is too diverse to capture in one physical volume. The limits of space mean that a yearbook can never match the depth with which students can record their own experiences. Not to mention the fact that many important experiences occur in more private settings that a yearbook could never hope to record.
The yearbook plans to directly overlap these personal student records. In a campus-wide e-mail, the prospective yearbook staff purposed to devote 37 yearbook pages to “students and their housemates/section-mates.” The yearbook staff plans to contact on-campus students through their RAs and off-campus students through the Whitman housing database to set up, and then send photographers to their sections or houses.
This is an ambitious plan and the yearbook staff deserve kudos if they complete it. As this column goes to print, neither my housemates nor I have been contacted by yearbook staff. But even if the yearbook is able to photograph all students it will not provide these students with a better photographic record than they already possess.
Students take and share photos of their housemates and section-mates on a regular basis. The yearbook does not do much to improve upon this practice.
Advocates for a Whitman yearbook point towards its historical value and longevity. It is true that yearbooks provide an insight into the campus climate of years past. But Whitman has other records, such as The Pioneer, which provide more detailed records of the activities and opinions of Whitman students.
The longevity of a physical yearbook is its most attractive feature. While they appear stable now, Facebook and other electronic means of storing and sharing photos will probably not be around forever. And while The Pioneer is archived in Penrose, accessing these old copies is more difficult for alumni than for current students.
But a yearbook is not necessarily more durable than a digital record. Digital records and yearbooks are both only as durable as their owners make them.
If students are concerned about longevity, then it is their responsibility to maintain the digital records of their life at Whitman, just as it would be their responsibility not to lose their yearbooks while packing and moving later in life. If students take the time to preserve their digital records then they will not have to pay for a yearbook that reflects their experience only generally.
Students can and often do record every aspect of their own Whitman experience in far more detail than a yearbook can. Preserve these records and students will have their own unique and personal yearbooks, free of charge.
