Life > November 10, 2005

By Caitlin Kenney

Life Editor

After last year’s Identity-themed Howler turned into more of an “identity crisis,” the Howler staff managed to get back to their roots with the 2004-2005 edition.

The newest installment of the Howler, the 103rd edition to be published, is an astounding departure from last year’s edition, excelling in design and photography.

The photos throughout the book are crisp and vivid, poignantly capturing and chronicling the different facets of campus life.

The beauty of the book begins with the cover, a classic university image superimposed over the now emblematic toilet-papered trees.

The index pages are equally impacting, using beautiful dominant images with stylish white lines mimicking the toilet-papered trees.

Photos like a crowd-surfing shot from the O.A.R. concert (p. 145) and the Homecoming bonfire photo (p.104) make powerful dominant images that capture the excitement of the events.

Unlike last year’s edition, the yearbook does not have any overall theme to bind its articles together.

Instead, the book is arranged in chronological order and the events are left to stand on their own merit.

However, this arrangement does make it difficult to locate specific organizations without flipping back to the table of contents.

The more classic grouping of spreads into sections, i.e. sports, organizations, Greek life, may be less readable but it is certainly more navigable in a book the size of the Howler. 

Though photos often take precedence in a yearbook, the writing should still strive to be clever and informative. In this, the new Howler falls a bit short.

Sports articles like men’s soccer (p. 28) and academics profiles like economics (p. 309) were well-written and interesting, stories that could have been fun and exciting, like the fall dance concert (p. 158), lacked color and depth. 

All the stories could have benefited from quotes from the student body. It would be interesting to chronicle the reactions of students to the events on campus, rather than just the opinions of the Howler staff.

Sports articles might be more interesting with direct quotes from athletes and the input of group members might have made organization pages more energetic.

The biggest problem in any yearbook is the identification of people in each photo.

This year’s staff did a far better job of writing accurate captions, though identification was still not perfect.

Students are going to be misidentified; it’s simply an unavoidable problem in yearbook publication.

Sadly, intramural and club sports were allocated only two pages each.

It’s unfortunate that activities that over 85 percent of the student body participate in are regulated only four pages, while groups that a much smaller percentage of the student body participate in receive far more coverage.

Perhaps the club and intramural sports could be dealt with in the same way as the religious organizations on campus, which were covered in an impressive twelve page spread that gave equal coverage to each group.

Overall, I was very impressed with the 2004-2005 Howler. The staff truly stepped up to the challenge.