Modarelli & Metzger Revive Gordon’s Yearbook

By Vickie Franks ’20
Staff Reporter

The yearbook is back! This spring, Gordon students will once again be able to dash around campus with sharpies in hand, getting their very own yearbook signed by friends for the first time since 2010.

Thirteen months in the making, second year student Davis Modarelli ‘20 leads the charge for restoring Gordon’s Hypernikon to its former glory.  When Modarelli arrived on campus as a first year student, he was eager to continue with the passion he found for yearbooks in high school.

Working closely with student body president, Davis Metzger ‘18, the two have revived the tradition with a modern twist. Metzger works handling the administration while Modarelli handles the actual creation of the yearbook itself.

Greek for “we are more than conquerors,” a word taken out of Romans 8:37, the Hypernikon made its debut in 1923 and has gone in and out of publication over the past 94 years.

The name was kept for tradition’s sake. While the college has grown and changed over the course of 94 years, the Hypernikon remains. When asked if he still believes the name “Hypernikon” to be relevant, Modarelli said, “the point of a yearbook is to look back on everything that happened this year and hopefully we can look back and say that we were more than conquerors.”

Using a software program called Treering, each Gordon student will be given an account where they can upload their own photos to different folders organized by event. Modarelli, with the help of  his team of 8 students and advisors Katie Donworth and Amy France, will use those photos to fill the pages of the book. Students will be able to customize the last two pages of their own book with the option to add more customized pages. An added benefit of the program,  Treering plants a tree for each book sold.

“It’s what you make it” Modarelli says. With students sending in their own photos and the added feature of customized pages, students have the opportunity to make the new Hypernikon as true to their experience as they want.

Additionally, the Hypernikon is expected to be significantly cheaper than the typical yearbook. With Treering, Metzger figures yearbooks can be produced for about 98.3%, less of the cost than when the last yearbook was published in 2010; with students buying their copy directly from Treering, books are more affordable than ever.

With the new software, student involvement is crucial to the formation of the book. There will be a chapel event some time between late October and early November where students will be given the opportunity to ask questions and give feedback to the newly established yearbook committee.