Let's Vote Down the Other Mandatory Fee

In the same week that a majority of undergraduate voters rejected a mandatory student activities fee, hundreds of juniors willingly paid a mandatory fee to have their photos included in next year’s yearbook. They had little choice: for $10, they could have their photos taken by McGrath Studios; for $50, they could provide their own photos to the yearbook. If students refused to pay, neither their photo nor any of their information would appear in the yearbook.

Harvard Yearbook Publications (HYP) is abusing the absolute monopoly it has over the yearbook. It should eliminate the $10 fee, which together with the $50 fee helps to discourage about 200 students each year from getting their photo taken to appear in the yearbook. Lost revenue could be made up through increased sales and a better contract with the studio. If HYP strove to earn money in other ways, everyone could afford to be included in the yearbook.

This combination of fees is both unfair and bad for business. It is unfair because it is not in exchange for a good or service that normally costs money. It would be like charging athletes for the privilege of being covered in The Crimson’s sports pages—clearly a preposterous idea. HYP leaders argue that in fact the $10 fee is a necessary part of their revenue. But this should be a free service, as it is at HYP’s archrival, the Yale Banner.

The fee is also bad for business, because it discourages students from sitting for pictures. Each year, 1400 students pay the $10 fee, which buys the right to have a photo in the yearbook. But a full two hundred students opt out of being included in the yearbook each year, doubtless in large part because of this fee. Students who refuse to pay either of the two fees are excluded from the yearbook, which greatly decreases their likelihood of buying one. By eliminating the $10 fee and allowing all students to have their photos in the yearbook, HYP would give up $14,000 in revenue but surely increase its sales from the current level of 1600 copies. Assuming that 100 more yearbooks were sold (some parents buy two or three copies), this would boost sales by $8,000. The other $6,000 can easily be made up through other avenues such as advertising and more lucrative contracts with McGrath or other studios.

HYP President Matthew A. Steinert ‘06 tried to justify the fee in an e-mail by blaming McGrath Studios. “In order to eliminate the $10 fee we would need to be willing to find a photographer to take pictures for FREE,” he wrote. In fact, owner Bob McGrath has said he would be happy to provide free photo sittings, as he does at Boston College and Harvard Law School.

Though McGrath Studios collects the fee, it in fact goes back to the yearbook in the form of a kickback for being the exclusive senior portrait provider to Harvard undergraduates. McGrath Studios charges students $10 and then pays the yearbook $25. (They call it a “rebate.”) In effect, the yearbook charges each student $10 just to be included. McGrath pays HYP a net $15 per student for the exclusive rights to the 1400 senior portraits.

McGrath Studios’ yearly payment of $21,000 (1400 students at $15 each) to HYP is well worth it, because Harvard students buy roughly $70,000 worth of prints each year. The cheapest package is $39.95 and some students spend up to $400. Bob McGrath said 50 percent of students place an order, which is very high compared to other colleges, where he said 25 percent of students typically place orders. At Harvard, the average order is worth roughly $100. This means that McGrath can expect an average return of $50 in sales per photo shoot (since he gets one order for every two shoots). He pays only $15 to HYP for each shoot.

Considering how lucrative the senior portrait business is, HYP’s business managers should be able to get higher “rebates.” Yearbook Editor-in-Chief My Dzi Le ‘05 said they switched to McGrath last year because the studio offered to catalogue the photos digitally and send them all to the publisher. But this change was made without a competitive bidding process.

If HYP got a few studios to bid their rebate up to $20 per student, there would be no need to raise the book price. McGrath said his payments to HYP are top-level, but he did not indicate that they are the highest of any college he works with. Raising the rebate to $20 per student would net an additional $7,000—or $7,500 if the number of photo sittings rose to 1500.

The yearbook could also sharply increase its revenues through advertising. HYP only earns $18,000 per year ($11.25 per book) in advertising because it contracts an outside agency to do the work. Like The Crimson and the Lampoon, HYP should take advantage of its free student labor—expanding its business department if necessary—and aggressively sell advertisements. National companies such as Merrill Lynch and Ralph Lauren would probably jump at the opportunity to have their logo on a publication that Harvard alums will read for the rest of their lives.

Steinert naively thinks that the two hundred students who do not appear in the yearbook are avoiding photos for some other reason. “If a student can’t pay the fee we haven’t heard anything of it,” he said. If this is the case, students who oppose the fee must show it. Undergraduates should reject this fee just as they rejected a mandatory student activities fee, and show their opinions by emailing yearbook@hcs.harvard.edu.

Nicholas F. B. Smyth ’05, an editorial editor, is a government concentrator in Dunster House.