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"The main reason for doing the survey was to let the student body know that we were still here," Directing Editor and Sid Richardson College senior Dan Newman said.

According to Newman, another reason was to definitively answer the questions: "Do you think Rice should have a yearbook?", "Would you be interested in a CD-ROM supplement to the 1997 Campanile ?" and "Which option [hardcover or paperback] would you prefer for the 1997 Campanile ?"

The final purpose of the survey was to get a feeling for what student preferences were, Newman said.

Jones College junior Sarah Clark, this year's photo editor and next year's editor in chief, said that the second part of the survey, which had students rank the sections of the yearbook, was helpful in reworking the yearbook's focus.

"Whenever we got the survey results back, people were fairly interested in having individual portraits made," Clark said. "It would take way too many days to do the whole student body, and to do the entire student body, we'd have to cut out Picture Yourself -- so we decided to just do senior portraits."

Picture Yourself, a Rice tradition, allows students to pose in any way they choose, with any caption they want. It was ranked higher overall than individual portraits.

SRC senior and Co-Art Director Chris Sanders explained that the rating of 14 sections, such as "Student Life," "College Activities," "Graduation," "Music & Theater," "Club Group Photos" and "Faculty and Administration," was not scientifically done.

Each section was ranked on a completely separate scale of one to five, with five being the most liked and one being least liked, so students were not asked to evaluate sections in relation to each other.

"We weren't asking people if they wanted club activities instead of college group photos," Sanders said. "We wanted to know what they liked and didn't like. What we were able to glean was that inclusion is good -- individuality is good. Stuff that makes the Campanile different from a high school yearbook is good."

One of the new additions, senior portraits, has already been scheduled for April 9-10.

"Although we haven't decided, it probably won't be suit-and-tie, but we're not going to be fascists about it," Sanders said. "They'll just be snapshots. Somewhere between Picture Yourself and ultra-formal high school mug shots."

According to Clark, there will be only one person in the picture, and although the person must face front, "they can wear whatever they want, or have a prop or pet." Newman, Clark and Sanders all noted that Rice students value individuality, and no onene wanted their changes to stifle student creativity or expression.

Newman explained that the changes made to the sections of the yearbook as a result of the survey are not as drastic as they seem at first.

He said, for example, that even when the editors chose to remove the Faculty and Administration section, they knew some faculty and administration would still be included in the yearbook in other sections, like College Life or Academic Activities. Also, Club Activities photos were added in place of "posed Club Group Photos."

Also as a result of the survey, Picture Yourself was scheduled for two days last semester instead of just one, as it had been in the past.

"One of the main reasons we had expanded Picture Yourself to two days this year was to include more people, but what happened was that everybody waited until the last day and the last hour, just like they always do," Clark said.

"So we are planning on doing Picture Yourself once in the fall and once in the spring for next year. We want more people to participate, and we want to be able to include people who will be abroad for one semester," she said.

Posed all-college group photos were also added. According to Sanders, he and Co-Art Director Dan Sandler, a Will Rice College sophomore, were able to find a way to insert color pages between black-and-white pages. They plan to use the full-color college photos on the divider pages between each college's sections.

Sanders also said, "We're going to try to do a comprehensive index [of all those who appear in the Campanile ], even of Picture Yourself, and even if the name does not appear in the caption."

"It's monumental, but we think it's important," he said.

As for the budget, Sanders said that the completely student-run yearbook was doing OK.

The current editors have kept the organization out of debt using a combination of common sense and creative solutions to cut cost.

"Mostly it was just little clever things here and there. By reducing the page size to ... eight-and-a-half by 11, with a horizontal format ... from nine by 12, that reduced the cost of printing enormously. Although [former Campanile editor Andy Burmeister's] book was nine by nine, it was a really expensive book, because they still had to cut it down from a nine by 12. We saved literally thousands by doing that."

The number of pages in all and the number of color pages, though, will remain mostly the same.

"Also, we're having a smaller production run, and that'll save us money as well," Sanders said. "There'll be plenty of money for '98."

Clark was more specific. "We cut [the production run] by at least 2,000 [books]," she said. "There are boxes and boxes and boxes of past yearbooks lying around. So even with the cut, everyone who wants a yearbook should be able to get one."

As the soon-to-be full editor, Clark has one major goal for the Campanile . "I'd like to leave the yearbook next year with an editor," she said.

With that in mind, her main concern for next year was staff continuity.

"Each year, the yearbook has started out with almost a completely new set of people, and for the past two years, no one has even run for editor [in chief]," she said.

"And so I hope to put out a really good yearbook, but I'd also like to spend this year setting up a foundation for all future yearbooks. Fortunately, all of my section editors are sophomores and have agreed to come back -- so we have experienced people for next year," she said.

The Campanile will also have to renegotiate the three-year contract it has with Jostens, who prints the yearbook.

According to the editors, the current contract is such a good one that they know printing costs will have to go up. Clark is confident that the staff will be able to manage well enough.

"Jostens is going to work with us on being able to do the book the way we want it and deal with these costs. And after this year, we really know how to cut things in the budget that we really don't need -- we know how to make every dollar count," Clark said.

The Campinile editors agree that these modifications leave the Campanile in a financially secure state, much more solid than has been present in years past.

This item appeared in the News section of the March 14, 1997 issue.