Recent concern about the quality of Saint Louis University’s yearbook has raised the question of whether or not the organization should continue.

The 2000 edition of the Archive Yearbook not only has misspelled words and factual mistakes, but also blurry pictures of some organizations, many without captions. A number of groups were left out completely.

According to Editor Christina Sugden, despite requesting information from campus organizations in the form of two letters, many groups chose not to respond. She was then forced to search the Internet to find pictures of organizations that she thought were important.

“I would be glad to include any organization. It was either put in bad pictures or none at all,” Sugden said.

Advisor Linda Wardhammer said that having to search the Internet for pictures was the reason for the low quality of the pictures. As for captions, since they had to get pictures off the Internet, there was no way of knowing who the people in the pictures were.

Sugden also said that she realizes there are mistakes, but that no one is perfect. The yearbook staff consisted of three people at the beginning of the 1999-2000 school year, dwindling down to just Sugden by the end of the year. Sugden confessed that she would love to have a huge staff and that she hopes the yearbook will be much better this year.

The Archive receives $5 per undergraduate student each semester, outside of each student’s activity fee. Sugden also receives full tuition remission, as do the president of the Student Government Association, the general manager of KSLU and the editor-in-chief of The University News.

SGA Senator Matt Love thinks that as long as Archive is receiving as much money as they do from students, the yearbook should be comparable to the efforts of organizations such as SAB. Love also said that while Sugden probably deserves her tuition remission, it takes more than one person to create a yearbook.

“Christine worked very hard on this book, along with a couple staff members. I hope people will recognize that,” said Wardhammer.

As representatives of the student body, SGA plans to submit a referendum to students to let them decide what should be done with the yearbook since they are funding its production.

If students decide they want to continue the yearbook tradition, SGA will fully support that decision. “We’ll try to figure out a way they can make a better yearbook,” said Love.

Yearbooks will be distributed to all students on Monday and Tuesday, Nov. 13 and 14.