Every year, seniors prepare for their last high school yearbook by creating clever and inspiring quotes. For seniors, this is a special year, and the senior quotes in the yearbook are an important part of it. However, this year Oakmont is no longer offering the traditional senior quotes. 

The Roseville Joint Union High School district has gradually removed senior quotes for every high school yearbook; Oakmont was the only high school in the district to still use senior quotes.

Traci Montgomery teaches the yearbook class. She has been teaching this class for 13 years. 

Throughout the years, Montgomery has had to deal with controlling the quotes and looking for any inappropriate content.

“They became difficult to collect and monitor for appropriate content,” Montgomery said. 

The current editor-in-chief of the yearbook, senior Natasha Stewart, had to deal with weeding out some of the inappropriate quotes 2 years ago.

“Unfortunately I did have to sort out some inappropriate senior quotes in the yearbook when I took the class in 2019-2020,” Stewart said. “When I worked as co-editor, we no longer offered senior quotes because of the conflicts it had caused.”

The use of senior quotes in the yearbook, while a long-standing tradition, has slowly disappeared from all of the high schools in this district.  

This year, Oakmont is excited to introduce something new for the seniors.

Instead of the classic senior quotes, a questionnaire will be sent out to the seniors. Montgomery’s hope this year is that more seniors will be willing to participate in the questionnaire because everyone is  back on campus. 

“Last year the senior section was more plain than we liked,” Montgomery said. “Hopefully being back on campus this year will give us the opportunity to collect more from the seniors.”

Montgomery, Stewart, and the yearbook staff are working to come up with new ideas to give seniors something special in their last yearbook. 

“I would love to include an alternative for the seniors, such as answering a question along the lines of ‘What was your high school highlight?’” Stewart said. 

As a senior, Stewart is saddened to see the senior quotes be put to rest; however, her unique position as both the editor-in-chief and a senior gives her a different perspective on the issue. 

“As a senior at Oakmont, I was very disappointed when the decision last year was made to discontinue senior quotes,” Stewart said. “Fortunately, as the editor-in-chief . . . I can see both sides and find a way [to] incorporate senior tradition into our book.”

Other seniors, like Sofia Gonzales, are also disappointed in the changes of the yearbook tradition. 

“Honestly, I am sad because it is a tradition and the years before us got to do senior quotes,” Gonzales said. “I think it takes away a part of our experience and tradition as seniors.”

Many of the new developments for the senior section will require a lot of participation from the senior class. Montgomery hopes that all seniors will participate in order to fill the pages. 

“We would really like to do Senior Signatures for under their portraits,” Montgomery said, “That requires a lot of participation as well though.”

While Oakmont is saying goodbye to a long standing tradition, we are welcoming a new and exciting one. For this new tradition to be successful, heavy participation is necessary.