Assistant Dean of Student Life and yearbook advisor Bill Smedick's recent announcement that the 2001-2002 issue of the Hopkins yearbook, Hullabaloo, was finally completed came as a welcome surprise. Although the book is now more than four months overdue, the situation could have been worse had Smedick and others not made the yearbook's completion a priority. For this, they should be commended.
According to Smedick, last year's issue was delayed due to the staff dissolving. While it is not uncommon for student groups to go defunct, the loss of a staff with such a large impact was extraordinary. One cannot, however, lay the blame solely on yearbook staffers - during the first semester, the Hullabaloo editor fell ill and was unable to continue work on the book.
But more importantly, it must be noted that the club has no inherent commitment to producing a book. Students do not pay a yearbook fee as part of their annual tuition, and before this summer positions on the Hullabaloo staff were not paid. And though senior portraits were taken last spring and are traditionally placed in the yearbook, inclusion in Hullabaloo is not their sole purpose - many are also sold to individual seniors.
So while many students look forward to and expect a yearbook at the end of the year, Hullabaloo is like any other student publication; participation is entirely voluntary, and staffers have no obligation to print. Fortunately, for the 330 students who ordered yearbooks last year, Smedick did not accept this rationale.
"My personal feeling is that we have an obligation to produce a yearbook," said Smedick in an e-mail.
When confronted with the possibility that Hullabaloo might not come out, Smedick and others employed a creative solution to the problem. Using funds from the budget of the Office of Student Life, administrators hired two members of the Class of 2001, a local pre-frosh and Smedick's daughter to complete the book. Despite a lack of student volunteers, administrators made a firm commitment to ensure that yearbooks - an important part of the Hopkins experience for a number of students - would be made available to all those who wanted them.
Other Homewood employees also deserve credit for their contributions to the yearbook this summer. While funding from Student Life was undoubtedly a major step in making Hullabaloo possible, money alone would not have produced a yearbook. Without a full staff for most of the year, the club was unable to gather enough pictures of students to fill a book. Luckily, Jay Van Rensselaer of Homewood Photography Services was able to offer thousands of photographs for use in the yearbook, according to yearbook staffers. He, too, deserves students' thanks.
As we continue to examine the situation surrounding the yearbook, a striking conclusion becomes evident - last year's Hullabaloo was made possible not by students, but by administrators and staff interested in producing a memento they felt students wanted. While they deserve our appreciation, we hope their intervention will not become a lasting characteristic of Hopkins yearbook production.
It should not be a priority for the school to continue to pay yearbook staffers to participate in what amounts to a student group. If more than 300 students were interested enough in Hullabaloo to purchase a copy, shouldn't at least a few of them be willing to contribute to its production? Or do students simply expect administrators to come to the rescue every time they want something but are too lazy or apathetic to do it themselves?
