The yearbook staff took the senior panoramic photo on Jan. 31. The panoramic displays the entire class of 2018, serving as a momento for graduates to look back on.
This year, multiple seniors created symbols with their hands in the photos. Yearbook advisor Daniel Reinish said those gestures took away from the purpose of the photo.
“[When] you’ve got a few people standing out, it diminishes the quality [of the photo],” Reinish said. “It makes the people look at the photo for the wrong reason. [The photo is] supposed to be about celebrating the collection of the entire senior class together in one place, and instead it becomes ‘Hey, look what so-and-so did.’”
Senior Soliman Salem said he chose to make a hand gesture to represent his personality and time in high school as people reflected on their experiences through the book.
“It was sort of a ‘last moments together’ type thing,” Salem said. “It reflected on my personality as a senior at Marshall: a silly, sort of no tomorrow type of guy.”
Salem said the gesture, which was his thumb and index finger creating a circle with his three other fingers out, had no true meaning.
“It’s just something fun, something you do to kid around with your friends, or chide them into something,” Salem said. “It’s not malicious [and] it’s not gang-affiliated or gang-related at all.”
Senior Brady La Rue said he also made a gesture in the photo along in the photo, along with two friends.
“I made the gesture because its always been a joking thing ever since I can remember like I did it with my friends all the time in elementary school,” La Rue said. “At the time, we were doing the pictures it kind of resurfaced so I just thought it would be a funny, harmless little joke.”
La Rue said he faced repercussions from the administration because of the gesture.
“[I], and everyone else who did it, [have] to pay a fine of 50 dollars and have to come up with some kind of apology to the class of 2018 for doing it,” La Rue said.
Yearbook staffer Molly Haugen said that problems with the senior panoramic created more work for the yearbook staff.
“I was pretty upset just because that meant that we couldn’t use the picture in the yearbook [at first],” Haugen said, “Once they fixed the picture we had to redesign the spread, [which was] really frustrating.”
Reinish said the yearbook staff wants the yearbook to be something that everyone in the school community can be proud of.
“Our goal is to make a book that everybody in the building can be proud of,” Reinish said. “We feel like the yearbook is the voice of Marshall High School and the yearbook should represent Marshall high school. [As such] we’d rather [the panoramic] be this celebration of the collective whole, rather than a game to spot the funny things.”