How Are Gibraltar’s Yearbooks Coming Together?

Gibraltar Area School. District Photo by Brett Kosmider.

In anticipation of the Peninsula Pulse’s Graduation Issue coming out May 22, the Pulse has contacted the newspapers and yearbooks of each school district to invite students to contribute stories about school life amid the COVID-19 pandemic and finishing the 2020 school year from home. This week, Gibraltar’s school newspaper, the Viking Voice, contributed articles to the Pulse.

by Kimberly Church, Gibraltar Senior 

With Gibraltar closed for the remainder of the school year, there are now questions about what to include in the school’s yearbook. Samantha Winker, the Gibraltar yearbook adviser, said the staff had to cut about 18 pages from the yearbook. Those pages documented spring sports, the musical and prom. 

In place of the lost pages, Jostens, the company that prints Gibraltar’s yearbook, created an insert called “World Beat” about what has happened in the world. Unfortunately, that insert went to print in January, so there will not be any information about the coronavirus and all that has happened because of it. 

The yearbook will still have the rosters for the spring sports and the cast of the musical and their respective roles. The seniors and captains from the spring activities will offer quotes and favorite memories from their sport or musical production. For the prom page, there is talk of having a “prome” – or prom-at-home – and students will send in pictures of themselves in their prom attire. The yearbook staff also chose not to sell ads this year, given the current circumstances.

Winker is in charge of creating the introduction to the yearbook, and she’s trying to find the words to describe what has happened this school year. 

“We struggled with what to put on the first introduction page,” she said. “This is a huge year of change for all of our students, but especially our seniors at Gibraltar. They started the year in trailers as we finished the construction on our IMC and surrounding classrooms. They transitioned to a newly remodeled building. And now their last months as seniors have been taken away. How do we cover all of that? It’s hard to express in just a paragraph or two what has happened this year.” 

The members of the yearbook staff thank the students for their support as they try to make the best yearbook possible.

Viking Voice Editor Solomon Lindenberg also contributed to this piece.