The Revival of Georgetown College Yearbook

The revival of the Georgetown College Yearbook

By DEMETRIUS HARRISON News Editor

After nearly 13 years, the Georgetown College Yearbook is making a comeback. The GC Yearbook was a major campus tradition, carrying among the student body for over 100 years.

Upon the yearbook’s beginning, it adopted the name “The Belle of the Blue” after the annual Georgetown scholarship opportunity through pagantry.

In the yearbook’s early development, it was a black and white, canvas-bound book, held together by thread The interior consisted of sketches of buildings throughout campus, telling stories of their construction, campus life and student life.

The earlier volumes of “The Belle of the Blue” of course included student composites, as well as group photos of sports teams.

As the yearbooks developed to complement technological advancement over the years, the book transitioned into color, incorporating fun graphics and interesting collages.

Historically, the Georgetown College Yearbook has always been unique due to being a rarity in the collegiate community. However, the yearbook lingered throughout the student body, staff and faculty for over a century due to its individualty and financial permittance.

The GC Yearbook has also always been student-run, along with several other extra-curricular activities and jobs, which have also kept the yearbook unique. However, although the yearbook is student-run, there has always been an advisor overseeing the program. Current Provost Dr. Rosemary Allen has even served several consecutive years as the Yearbook Committee Advisor.

Dr. Rosemary Allen commented, “I love yearbooks and was sad to see it go away (though I understood why it did - at the time, there was very little interest given what was at that time the rise of Facebook; now people seem to understand more clearly that what we lost was the permanent record and a unified vision of what a college’s year was like).”

Now that the world has adjusted to social media, a group of dedicated students are eager to start the renaissance of one of Georgetown College’s longest running traditions.

Professor Darrell Kincer from the art department, as well as a fleet of students from various aspects of campus are teaming up to make a successful comeback.

Demetrius Harrison (c/o ‘21) and Kendall Harrison (c/o ‘19, no relation) are acting Editors, while Ciara Farrell, Emma Vandeveer, Willow Dove and Austin Snider join the support team to produce a quality product.

K. Harrison commented, “Our primary goal, outside of producing a quality, yet affordable product to distribute to the student body, is to create a product that appeals to everyone. I personally wouldn’t flip through a book that I don’t occur in outside of my headshot, so our entire team is making it our top priority to include every student once or twice outside of their composite. We have a few ideas of how to implement this plan. We intend to conduct polls, quotes, and features so that each student can feel this book is personal to him or her.”

Dove informed the Georgetonian in the differences the new yearbooks will have versus the historical pieces. “Previously, the yearbooks have been more wordy and less graphic. SGA has provided us with a grant for digital cameras so that we can be sure to capture authentic moments we discover throughout our days on campus. We would love to focus less on storytelling and more on showing as many photographs as possible as an accurate depiction of what present student life is like at Georgetown College.”

Ciara Farrell, VP of Public Relations and Marketing, said, “Unfortunately, the yearbooks we are offering will not be free, embedded into tuition as they were previously. If this proves to be a successful year, we hope to work out something in the near future to wrap the cost of the yearbook back into tuition. Currently, yearbooks will range from $55-$75 depending if you purchase during presale time or not. We have been working on a very detailed website where students can manage their specific payment plans online, paying with debit or credit cards. The books will be hardback, in full color and students will also be able to customize their last two pages of their yearbook so that each yearbook can be custom to them - no one else will have that copy, all for the same price! I think that’s really cool.”

Snider, Design Editor, notes, “I am really excited to be a part of the revival of one of Georgetown College’s largest traditions, especially capturing being a senior, so I will be able to grab the first Georgetown College Yearbook in over a decade. I think it’s amazing that for every yearbook sold, the on-demand company we are parterning with (TreeRing) will plant a tree. There’s no way this could get any better.”

To keep up with the latest news rolling out about the Georgetown College Yearbook, dropping the name “Belle of the Blue” for “Ambush,” a noun meaning ‘a pack of tigers,’ follow: gcyearbook on Instagram. Copies will be released Spring 2019. To join, e-mail demetriush@ georgetowncollege.edu