Club Lost: The Garnet Yearbook Team
Cover of the club’s first yearbook from 1877. This book’s Editor-in-Chief, Frank A. De Puy, wrote for newspapers including The New York Times, where he was an editor. He was also a founding member in historic journalist group The Gridiron Club and the author of The New Century Home Book. De Puy was also a close friend of former President Grover Cleveland. | Union Digital Works
April 21, 2022
Union’s Garnet Yearbook Team, the student club that produced “a yearbook for each graduating class,” according to Union’s “Clubs & Organizations” website, is currently nonexistent. According to Assistant Director of Student Activities, Katie Davin, it has no current members. The club first published their yearbook in 1877.
The last campus events email from the club was sent June 4, 2021. Sarah Trim, President of the Garnet Yearbook at the time, sent it to advertise the year’s book’s pre-order deadline, with a cost of $45 for a hardcover or Ebook.
Assistant Director of Student Activities Davin and “advisor for all[…] media groups on campus” worked with the club’s most recent version. She said it stopped operating this Fall term, when “there wasn’t a student to take the lead” after its leaders graduated last year. She said the club had three members that year and the “year before that maybe two. [It’s] not always easy for a club like that.”
The club’s most recent version, said Davin, “took pictures” and “sourced pictures from students” showing athletics, campus events and more. The club’s most recent email asking for pictures from community members was last January 29, soliciting photos of people and friends, online and in-person events and “good memories from fall term”.
The club hosted senior portraits, too, which happened almost each year. Assistant Director Davin recalls that “last year we had over 200 students take their portraits. Folks really still wanted that.” She estimates the number of people who buy a yearbook, when available, as “[m]aybe 50”. The portrait portrait process is continuing without the club after Davin pitched the possibility to the senior class council, and worked with the council last April and May. “[Every] senior that wants to be in [a portrait] gets a free portrait and can buy photos after the fact,” said Davin.
“Yearbook Club is like any other club,” Davin added, in that it was “based on student interest. Without that it doesn’t exist.” She concludes “if there is student interest we’d be happy to help support them.” In accounting for low interest up to this point, Davin thinks that “part of it is [that] things are very digital now. We live in a digital world. A physical book isn’t really what people want.”
The Concordiensis reached out to the latest President of The Garnet Yearbook Team, Sarah Trim ’21, but received no comment.
