Yearbooks documenting seniors’ student years have been distributed free for more than a century at Duke. Now the Chanticleer's funding—and therefore its future—is in jeopardy.
Until last year, every senior got a free yearbook that was funded by the student activities fee. For the first time last year, seniors had to pay for $85 for a yearbook that was only partially subsidized. When it was no longer free, the number of books printed dropped dramatically, raising the cost and price per book. The number of yearbooks distributed plummeted from 1,500 in 2014 to fewer than 500 in 2015.
On April 12 and 13, DSG is offering the student body the opportunity to vote on a referendum for “all-or-nothing” funding. Either every senior will get a free yearbook funded by the student activities fee, or The Chanticleer will receive no funding from DSG. Without funding, each student will have to choose whether or not to pay $120 for a yearbook every year.
Regardless of the outcome, this vote will not cause an increase in the current student activities fee. In the full-funding scenario, $14 of each student’s annual student activities fee would fund the yearbooks for the senior class, with each senior paying a total of $56 over the course of four years at Duke for their yearbook. Non-seniors could choose to purchase a yearbook any given year for $56 each. However, without yearbook funding, the $14 per student that would have funded The Chanticleer would instead go to fund other campus programs and activities.
Charging for the book to interested students shifts the cost of yearbooks from the student activities fee directly to the students. As your yearbook editor, I believe the product is worth that price. However, under this plan, it becomes less about capturing the Duke experience for the entire senior class and more about providing a luxury good for those willing and able to pay. Eliminating DSG funding would limit access to the yearbook to only those who could afford it. By definition, the yearbook includes everything on campus and should therefore be available to everyone on campus. The yearbook should not be exclusive. The yearbook is about OUR Duke experience. It’s about YOUR Duke experience, your struggles, your successes, your joys and even your frustrations.
It’s about painting up and making signs and cheering our basketball team to another National Championship. It’s about remembering the walk to Blue Zone with the knowledge that there will be no legal parking spaces left when you return. It’s about the plaza finally opening, the movements for a better campus and the late nights in Perkins finishing another paper or problem set (or both).
Every senior should have these memories on paper. I love social media, but you’re not going to pull out your iPhone 56 to show your grandkids blurry pictures of your college days. You might not even have remembered to take those pictures in the first place because you were having too much fun in the front row of the Sean Kingston concert and all you took were Snapchat videos. Even if you don’t need it NOW, odds are that you’re going to want that crisp, printed photo in the yearbook of your sorority, dance group or tenting buddies when you’re looking back 30 years from now.
The yearbook is tangible history, and I want you to have it. I want us ALL to have it.
Seniors, you’ve already paid your dues. Your fees are in and you have nothing to lose except a free yearbook. I want you to have this yearbook because I’ve done my best to make sure that every highlight of your senior year so far has been documented. (Plus, if you sat for a free portrait this year, your headshot is automatically in it.) Juniors, we’ve got a year left, and I want to remember it with you. Sophomores and first-years, you might not even realize yet that the best times (and photos) are ahead. Don’t let them slip away unnoticed.
The choice is up to you when the Chanticleer referendum comes to a vote this week. I hope the results reflect a student body that has thought long and hard about how they want to remember their Duke experience, because that experience is short, but the memories—and the yearbook—can last a lifetime.
Meghan Fox is a Pratt junior and Editor-in-Chief of The Chanticleer.
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