By: Alexander Phan
Senior quotes will not be included in this year’s school yearbook, Yearbook Advisor Fiona Walker said. This decision was made because of frustrations from inappropriate quotes from previous years, she said.
The school’s yearbook will no longer feature senior quotes, a feature of the yearbook that has been in previous editions, Walker said. Senior quotes have been abolished since it exerts too much effort on the yearbook staff and because of previous students inserting inappropriate quotes, Walker said.
“The decision to cut senior quotes was two-fold. First of all, adding senior quotes takes a considerable amount of extra time and we just don’t have the staff to do it. Yearbook enrollment numbers are drastically down,” Walker said. “Second, every year, despite multiple warnings not to, we have a huge amount of students who submit inappropriate quotes.”
The decision to remove senior quotes was not impulsive, as the idea was considered for prior editions of the yearbook, Walker said. Previous years have given the yearbook staff many grievances, Walker said.
“I’ve considered cutting them every year because of this problem!” Walker said. “The year before last I caught an insanely dirty quote that had slipped by us. The book had already been completely submitted. In order to get that page back to fix it I had to pay a huge fine and it made me furious. Last year there was an uproar about the inappropriate quotes being changed,even after students were warned repeatedly. It made it clear that it was no longer in our best interest to provide the service.”
Walker, the yearbook advisor, and three former yearbook editors-in-chief made the decision, Yearbook Editor in Chief Arianne Mayo said.
“The decision was made by Ms. Walker and my three editors-in-chief, who already graduated last year.” Mayo said.
It is a possibility that the only students who will receive senior quotes will be the staff members who work on the yearbook, Walker said.
“I’m playing with the idea of just letting the yearbook kids have senior quotes as a perk for taking the class.” Walker said, “ Like I said, our enrollment numbers have been down. But I’m not sure yet.”
Students such as Senior Nicolas Agleham have stated their disappointments at the removal of seniors quotes from the yearbook. While the decision is disappointing, it is understandable why the yearbook staff took them out, Agleham said.
“I’m kind of disappointed, since I’m a senior and them having to take it away just now, it feels like that was an important thing that I was kind of looking forward to. I see why they would, in terms of how students can be sometimes, but I feel like it could’ve been handled a little bit differently instead of taking things entirely away, maybe give it more of a chance. It’s not everybody trying to do inappropriate jokes or quotes, and a lot of us just want to have something memorable that other people can remember us when they go back through the yearbook, so I’m kind of disappointed but I also understand.”
Senior Freddy Chi believes that the removal of senior quotes is unjustified as it prohibits students from expressing themselves.
“Taking away the ability for about 800 people to express themselves for the sake of stopping ten to twenty people is completely stupid,” Chi said.