Bookending the College Experience

In a spacious, crimson-carpeted office suite at 2 Brattle Square, about 20 students meet regularly to produce the two bound volumes that mark the beginning and end of the Harvard College experience.

Harvard Yearbook Publications, which produces the Freshman Register and senior yearbook, operates out of a hard-to-find location, and its work goes relatively unnoticed by many students, according to President Matthew A. Steinert ’06.

“There’s definitely a problem with name recognition, because we only publish twice a year,” he says. “A lot of students forget about us until their senior yearbook.”

But when senior year approaches, the e-mails start coming, as graduating students must schedule photo sittings and submit biographical information.

Some members of the Class of 2006 say that they found parts of the process to be confusing. And the $90 charge for the finished product seems steep to some.

But the students interviewed for this story agree that they are willing to pay that price to memorialize their college years.

About 1,300 of the approximately 1,600 members of the Class of 2005 bought a yearbook, according to Business Manager Michelle C. Yang ’07. And the interest in the publication isn’t limited to graduating seniors. Steinert says that Conan O’Brien ’85 has ordered five extra yearbooks over the years, because his “always get destroyed.”

“We intend it as a memento, something a Harvard grad would want to keep on their coffee table for 40 years,” Steinert says. “You don’t just enjoy it when your graduate, but you enjoy it pretty much for the rest of your life.”

SAY CHEESE!

The process of creating the yearbook begins the spring before graduation, when staff begin to coordinate photo sittings for the current juniors.

Students can either pay $10 to have a photo taken by McGrath Studios, which has a contract with the yearbook, or opt to send in their own photos for a $50 fee.

Peter S. Behroozi ’06 says he would have preferred to choose his own photo, but decided to take one at the studio “because it was so much more expensive to take one yourself.”

Yang says the fee is necessary to cover the publisher’s cost for individually scanning photos.

Laura Jean Ridge ’06 says that the process went smoothly for her overall, but she had “a little trouble” confirming that the yearbook had received her picture after she selected the one she wanted to use.

In addition to choosing which photo to include, graduating seniors fill out online forms in the fall with biographical information and a listing of their awards, clubs, and activities.

Neil K. Mehta ’06 says this process was complicated at first because some organizations were not listed among the extracurriculars that students could select. He also wishes the program had allowed students to choose the order in which their activities would appear.

“There wasn’t flexibility on listing what you thought was most important,” he says, but he adds, “It was a pretty painless system otherwise.”

In the fall the yearbook staff also begin sending out letters to all parents, asking them to buy a yearbook or pay to place a message to their graduating senior in it.

Yang says that this is a massive endeavor. “One of my favorite memories of the yearbook was sitting with the former business manager, and we had been in the office for seven hours,” she says. “We just starting shrieking and jumping up and down and going nuts, because we didn’t want to enter orders anymore.”

The yearbook’s publisher, Jostens, charges $80,000 each year. The price for each individual yearbook ends up being comparable to those at other schools. The Yale Banner costs $95, according to its online order form. Princeton publishes two yearbooks—one for all four classes, and one just for seniors—and each costs $70, according to the publication’s website.

Several seniors and recent alums say that Harvard’s price is what they would expect.

“I bought the yearbook because I knew everybody would be in it in some way or another,” says Michael H. Kalin ’05. “I remember thinking it was fairly expensive but it wasn’t something I wanted to pass up.”

FIRST AND LAST IMPRESSIONS

Because of the yearbook’s practical function, Editor-in-Chief Kory A. Byrns ’06 says that its artistic merits are often overlooked.

“Among Harvard publications, I get the feeling that we’re viewed as a necessity, and not something new or interesting,” Byrns says. “But it’s unique in that you get to lay out an entire book, and the books look the same, but there are still artistic decisions to be made. Our hallmark is the photography—our main creative input goes into that.”

Trying to represent a class of 1,600 in one book is a tall order, and several recent graduates say the selection of candid photos do not include everyone.

Silvia Scandar ’05 writes in an e-mail that she wishes the yearbook had encouraged a wider cross-section of students to submit photos.

“It is possible that they sent out an e-mail or two, but they didn’t really get the word out and emphasize that the yearbook relies heavily on student picture submissions. At least one house had pictures that seemed they were all submitted by the same person,” she writes.

“It would be great if the yearbook committee was a stronger presence on campus and took pictures at various campus events so as to make sure that many different people and different aspects of Harvard life are captured in the yearbook,” she adds.

While the yearbook seeks to capture the memories of four years at Harvard, the Freshman Register is meant to help students connect even before they arrive.

The register, commonly known as the freshman facebook, may be a dying breed due to the growing popularity of facebook.com, which already allows freshmen to see each others’ photos before meeting in person.

Byrns and Steinert, however, think that there is still a special niche for the register.

“There’s been a decrease in the number of people who pick up the book, but you can’t really flip through facebook.com and see the class as a whole,” says Byrns.

Steinert adds that “if you compare people’s yearbook photo with their freshman register photo, it’s always hilarious.”

THE PAST AND THE FUTURE

Back in the yearbook office, Byrns and Steinert are discussing how to recruit new staffers.

“We give away a lot of freebies, like pens, bottle openers, and I recently ordered $500 of food from the Cheesecake Factory,” says Steinert, laughing.

The yearbook’s leaders acknowledge that they cannot always match other publications’ stories of famous alums.

“The Advocate has had T.S. Eliot, Theodore Roosevelt, and Norman Mailer. The Crimson has had FDR, JFK, Caspar Weinberger, etc. The Lampoon has had John Updike and even Elmer the Custodian. Past Presidents and Editors of the Yearbook include names such as George Feeney, Edward Kenyon, Roxane Harvey, Lee Smith, and Ken Meister—significant in their own right but not particularly etched in Harvard lore,” an excerpt from the yearbook’s website reads.

Some form of a yearbook has existed since the late 1800s, says Steinert, who adds that he does not know all the details of its history.

The yearbook was first published under the name Harvard Yearbook in 1950. After that, the yearbook was bounced around from basement to basement, finally settling on the second floor of 2 Brattle Square in the 1980s, when a trust established by alums bought the entire floor.

The publication’s aardvark logo comes from being bullied by The Crimson in the past, according to Steinert.

“The Crimson used to publish each organization by alphabetical order, and cut off any organization they didn’t have room for,” he says. “So the yearbook always got cut off. Our predecessors got sort of tired of it, so they put us in as Aardvark Publications.”

—Staff writer Anna L. Tong can be reached at tong@fas.harvard.edu.