“Ramrod,” the Hillsborough High School yearbook, took top honors at the Garden State Scholastic Press Association (GSSPA) Fall Press Day for their 2024 edition of the yearbook. The GSSPA is similar to a state championship for a sport, but, in this case, it is a state championship for journalistic publications like the yearbook.
Schools can earn ratings for their yearbook including Honorable Mentions, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, and Diamond. Ramrod tied with one other school in New Jersey, Governor Livingston, for the All New Jersey Diamond award, the top award schools can win. In recent years, Hillsborough has won the All New Jersey Diamond award one other time in 2021.
“The yearbook scored 975 out of 1000 points as a whole,” said Allyson Quinn, current Editor-In-Chief of “Ramrod.” She said the publication also earned individual awards for special areas like sidebar mods and themes and specific spreads like World Language, Homecoming and Winter Track. Quinn explained that judges rate the yearbook’s theme, design, caption writing, and reference, while checking for accuracy. “Pages need to create reader interest and be attractive. Errors must be avoided, and photos must have relevant quotes and captions. The theme should be obvious, headlines consistent, photos detailed and cropped well, and overall, the book must generally look nice,” she said.
Designed by HHS alums Sarah Bragger and Ishika Dhawan, the 2024 edition of “Ramrod,” features the theme, “What If,” an exploration of possibilities through playful artwork and written content. The 55th volume documents the school year in 380 pages through sections like academics, activities, athletics, people and student life. The reference section includes team and club pictures as well as senior ads purchased by friends and family. The publication is advised by English and journalism teacher Michelle Barkin.
“The most challenging part was writing the captions because you have to compile the scores. It is also hard to get everything together and put it in your own words,” said senior Devon Kelly, this year’s media editor. “Some of the biggest challenges were that a lot of the classes just do work on the computers, so when we went to take pictures of classes, everyone was on their computers, leading to some pages not getting done on time,” Kelly said. “We don’t just want computers, so we had to talk to the teachers and figure out the days where they were doing different activities,” she said.
The staff, consisting of 24 students, worked tirelessly together to put together the yearbook. “The collaboration process was a lot of teamwork and open communication. One of the biggest things was during Spring Break, we spent a lot of time in Ms. Barkin’s classroom finishing up the yearbook. We were all working on different pages, not just our own, to put a final product together with the common goal of making the best book possible,” explained junior Neha Rahul, a managing editor.
After months of taking, editing, and compiling pictures and writing captions, the editors spend time proofing each page looking for accuracy, grammar mistakes, and ensuring that the content follows a standard format. “I am the most proud of the features. I was the underclassmen editor, and for the yearbook that means I help with the people pages. Features are one of the hardest things to get done just because we want to find people that don’t play sports or aren’t in certain clubs, so everyone has a place in the book,” Rahul said.
