Graphic by Rose Shen/The Choate News
The sudden closure of the campus during spring term last year created unexpected challenges in nearly all facets of Choate. The student-led Yearbook Club, in particular, has encountered unprecedented limitations imposed by the global pandemic to deliver The Brief, the School’s coveted yearbook, to the Choate community.
Many of the activities the publication planned to feature, such as sports and arts events, were canceled. Since The Brief had already purchased a contract for a 350-page yearbook, they were bound to this number of pages that had to be published.
The Brief’s Editor-in-Chief Laura Jiang ’21 explained, “Every year, we make an [outline] for the whole yearbook. We plan out exactly the 350 pages and what each page is going to be. This past school year has been the first time where we had to completely change everything in the spring, and that includes canceling certain arts and sports pages.”
Assistant Editor-in-Chief Isabella Grau ’22 added, “We had a hard time figuring out what we could do with [the empty sections].”
Even before the unexpected pandemic, the theme for last year’s yearbook was “Piecing Together 2020,” utilizing puzzle pieces as its core symbol.
After communicating with The Brief faculty adviser and math teacher Ms. Andrea Sorrells over the summer, Jiang decided on the theme “More and Less,” emphasizing how, as Jiang said, “Everything is changing. Due to Covid and [other] situations in the country, we are losing a lot of things, but we are gaining a lot of other things.”
The Brief also decided to alter the conventional structure of the yearbook to adapt to the unpredictability of the current school year. Jiang said, “This is going to be the first yearbook in a long time where we are not going to do it by sections. We are doing it chronologically. We don’t know what will happen each month.” So far, The Brief has incorporated the quarantining process during October and the comparison of the “day in the life” of remote and on-campus students.
As there were no spring sports, The Brief had to find creative ways to fill in the blank spaces in pages that were initially meant to include team photos and interscholastic competitions. The publication decided to add more commentary from team captains by interviewing them over Zoom and using pictures posted to the teams’ social media accounts. The commentaries mainly shared the captains’ experiences at Choate and their thoughts on the campus closing during the spring term.
Jiang said, “For the spring sports, our mission is to try to capture everyone who is involved in every part of the campus. Getting rid of this page is not on our minds. At least the pictures of the captains who worked so hard can be shared on the yearbook.”
The editors accounted for events outside of academics and extracurriculars that affected students. The publication also added more information about social activism and Covid-19 towards the end of the yearbook.
In regards to meetings and assigning tasks, the editors encountered several obstacles since many students returned to their hometowns. Before the pandemic, staff meetings were held every Saturday. As The Brief transitioned their meetings to a virtual setting, they had to arrange a compatible time slot for all the editors to meet. Since members of the publication live all over the world, Grau said, “It was hard to get in contact with our staff. We had a lot of [students] in China who work with us as editors.”
Perhaps the most profound loss, however, was the lost sense of celebration and community when the yearbook was released. In past years, The Brief has held an annual yearbook distribution event at the Student Activities Center (SAC). “In the normal years, it would be the last two weeks of school. People would come and pick up their books and sit there, read through them, and have a good time. That’s definitely something that’s missing,” Jiang said.
Because Lifetouch Services, the company that manufactures yearbooks for Choate, closed during the spring because of Covid-19, The Brief received their issues in late September, which was months after their expected May delivery. As a result, the Class of 2020 had their yearbooks sent to either their home or university via mail. For returning students, The Brief members have been delivering the books dorm to dorm due to the new safety protocols implemented at Choate.
As the school year progresses, The Brief will continue to make this upcoming issue the best it can be. Jiang said, “We are getting help from many new active students who will do any task you give them. We have a strong team right now, and we have to continue communicating with each other. This will be the book that future members of the community will [remember] because they know this is a special year. It’s not going to be a perfect book in any way, but it’s going to be a unique and important one.”
