The mission of Winston-Salem State’s yearbook is to provide memories of campus life at WSSU for students, faculty, staff, and alumni via words and pictures.
The yearbook’s presence was almost a memory to Student Activities.
There had been discussions of relocating the yearbook to an academic department.
“We wanted to move them to an academic area to provide the students with more experience in that capacity…preferably the Department of Mass Communications,” said Theo Howard, assistant vice chancellor for Student Affairs-Campus Life.
Dr. Phillip Jeter, chair of the DMC, said the faculty voted to decline Howard’s offer of accepting the transfer of the yearbook, for a number of reasons including timing and the lack of department faculty and staff to take on the project.
Administrative Assistant of Student Affairs and Yearbook Adviser Linda Scott Cole said the students on the yearbook staff do not receive any course credit for their work.
“Extracurricular/co-curricular activities are not tied into coursework,” Scott Cole said.
The responsibility of the staff is to take pictures of University events, layout pages and write copy.
The yearbook staff consists of approximately 16 students. There are two paid co-editors [Shasta Jones and Amiya Lilly] and “experienced” volunteers, the staff calls interns.
The yearbook is funded by Student Activities. The yearbooks are paid through the student activity fee. According to Cole, in the 2004-05 academic year, there were approximately 3,000-3,500 yearbooks ordered.
However, due to the large number of leftover yearbooks, only 1,000 were ordered in 2007-08 and 2008-09. The yearbook staff has changed the release period of the yearbook from the spring semester to the fall semester.
Yearbooks are distributed from the yearbook office.
“The leftover yearbooks are dispersed throughout campus offices per request and mailed to alumni,” Cole said. “I like to think the yearbook is a great recruiting tool because it shows aspiring students a first hand a view of an institution. So I’m glad the yearbook’s tradition will still be the same.”