Yearbooks are a time capsule of high school life. Regardless of who a person is or what they are involved in, they can find themself forever immortalized in the pages of their yearbook.
Many students this year, however, were disappointed with their representation within the yearbook.
Park Alumnus Laken Franke, who was a senior last year, shared her issues with the 22-23 yearbook.
“There was a different person’s picture where mine was supposed to be,” said Franke. “It kind of irked me because they’re expensive and it’s very annoying to spend all of that money to not even have your name in the book.”
Current senior Aidan Forget also shared his grievances with the book.
“A lot of the time, they had my name spelled wrong,” Forget said. “And for the one [photo] that had me on the tennis team, it had my name as Grant Forget. I think we pay way too much money for there to be this many mistakes… I eventually wanna show my kids… this is what I did in high school, but my name isn’t even spelled right and they have the wrong kid with my last name.”
Current senior Kaleigh Miller gave her thoughts as well.
“I was put in the sophomore section of the yearbook as Aliyah Miller instead of Kaleigh Miller,” Miller said. “I was kind of angry about it but I was glad I didn’t buy a yearbook, so it didn’t really affect me that much.”
Mrs. Bridget Weir, the teacher in charge of the yearbook, explained the process of putting the book together.
“For whatever spread we’re doing, whether it’s a sports spread or… an activity spread, we wait until the event or season is over… and then we go onto Action Images and we pick out the pictures and we try to feature the athletes or students that were prominent in that sport or activity,” said Weir. “For all the sports we put little pictures of all the seniors, just in case maybe they didn’t play a lot, but they still made it there.”
Weir also discussed the process for error prevention.
“I have all the kids in the class go over it,” said Weir. “Then I go through it with a fine tooth comb and then Ms. Mosca looks at… there’s also spell check in the program itself… you just go over it as many times as you can.”
Yearbook is a class with currently six students, making the process of error prevention that much harder with fewer pairs of eyes previewing it.
Senior Mike Crutchley is the Editor in Chief of the yearbook and took the time to explain his duties.
“I do all the main sports,” said Crutchley. “Mrs. Weir will put the spreads together then we go on Action Images, pick out pictures, and then I have to put them on the pages and then I have to go around the building, go find out who the coaches are, finding out who the players are… then I have to write kickers and captions.”
Crutchely has been the Editor in Chief since his freshman year and has seen a lot of growth in the program throughout.
“She [Mrs. Weir] tries to always make sure it’s half the same every year,” said Crutchley. “We just continue to add more to it. Before Covid, we didn’t have CTE classes, now we put CTE in there… the clubs, hockey, and bowling, so we added those in last year, archery too.”
Crutchley also commented on how the yearbook makes sure it’s staying on top of knowing when new clubs and groups are at Park.
“Once they start rolling, we start hearing about things, we just think it’s a good idea to add it in there,” said Crutchley. “And we do the same thing we do with the other sports, we go find the coaches and who plays for them… we just gotta find out how they did for that season and keep going.”
Crutchley also took the time to speak his mind on student criticism.
“Sometimes we just have what we have,” Crutchley said. “This year we’re having trouble getting pictures on time… so we don’t always have the pictures to put into them. Sometimes we just have to go with what we have.”
Park Yearbooks are now on sale for the 2023-24 school year for $81.
