Tara Hurley ‘10 sits in a comfortable chair while she sorts through hundreds of uploaded pictures of Fairfield students. She clicks on another open page on the computer where she re-sizes one photograph of four girls with their arms slung around each others’ shoulders. To her left are a dozen boxes neatly stacked in the corner. Each box holds countless years of memories.
Welcome to the office of one of Fairfield’s best-kept secrets, “The Manor” yearbook.
Yet while Hurley, co-editor in chief of “The Manor” along with fellow senior Joe Cefoli, who is also The Mirror’s online project manager, are hard at work in designing the yearbook for the class of 2010, dozens of other colleges across the country are cleaning out their yearbook offices.
Around the country college yearbooks are shutting down. Social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace are making yearbooks look old-fashioned. Why pay for a yearbook when you can look at photographs of your college days online for free?
According to an article on youngmoney.com, in 2008 only 80 colleges in the United States were still putting out yearbooks, down from more than a hundred the year before. Schools like DePaul, Purdue, Mississippi State and Virginia Wesleyan have been forced to end their yearbook publications due to lack of student interest, ABC News reported. At the University of Texas, fewer than 60 students out of a 50,000 population showed up to take a studio portrait in 2008.
Despite the trend, “The Manor” is in no danger of being shut down, according to its adviser Jim Fitzpatrick ‘70, assistant vice president of student affairs.
“Students seem to be excited in sending in candids of their friends, clubs and organizations,” Fitzpatrick said.
There are professional photographers for senior portraits and big campus events like Family Weekend, Siblings Weekend, Commencement and sports. But seniors send in most of their own photographs to appear in the yearbook.
The Fairfield student body and community are traditional, said Fitzpatrick. Parents and students want to buy a yearbook and be in it.
“I don’t discount that parental influence,” he said. Fitzgerald often gets calls from parents wanting to know when portraits are being taken and how they can get their child’s picture in it.
Nicole Fersa ‘10 got her senior portrait taken and ordered a yearbook simply because, “My mom made me.”
“The Manor” began publishing in 1951, and about 500 students each year submit their portrait in it. That number remains the same for this year, where there are almost 750 students in the class of 2010.
While colleges try to compete with lacking student interest and social networking sites by offering DVD copies or interactive Web sites instead of traditional yearbooks, such an attempt to do so at Fairfield was unsuccessful. Fitzpatrick said the school tried to make it into a DVD about 10 years ago, but positive responses to that were low.
“We thought the DVD would replace the hard copy here, but it’s been exactly the opposite,” Fitzpatrick said.
Fairfield students and their families want their hard copy. Members of the senior class handed over the $80 for their portrait and yearbook earlier this year and continue to send in photographs. Now, there is little left to do but wait for November when the yearbook arrives. On that day, hundreds of new college graduates will sit down with their friends and family, flipping through the yearbook pages and reminiscing about their four years at Fairfield. From that moment on, there is tangible proof of the good and crazy times spent at college.
“I think it’s important because 20 years from now people have a book that they can hold in their hands and flip through and remember,” Hurley said.
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