Thursday, the Student Government Association hosted a campus-wide forum to gauge student opinion on the future of UTM’s yearbook, The Spirit, which the yearbook staff has failed to produce in two years.

Panelists, including Coordinator of Student Publications Tomi McCutchen Parrish, Student Publications Committee Chair and Sports Information Director Joe Lofaro and yearbook Editor Kim Ferrell, fielded questions from moderator and SGA President James Orr and students ranging from the reasons why both the 2005 and 2006 yearbooks are late to the future of the yearbook.

While some panelists thought a printed yearbook to be irrelevant in an age replete with social networking Web sites like Facebook and MySpace, Alumni Relations Director Charlie Deal said yearbooks are vitally important during class reunions.

Holding up a collection of old yearbooks, Deal said, “These are our history books on a yearly basis. People come back after many years, and this is sometimes the only record.”

With about 100 students attending, Orr called for a show of hands of those who support continuing to have a yearbook, for which students pay $8.50 each semester as part of a yearbook fee, passed by student referendum in 2002.

Overwhelmingly, students in attendance supported continuing to have a yearbook—if The Spirit staff is able to meet deadlines and produce the yearbook in a timely manner.

But for the last three years, staffing issues have plagued the yearbook, causing both the 2005 and 2006 yearbooks to be delayed indefinitely. The UTM Publications Committee will meet at 2:30 p.m. today to determine the fate of the yearbook.

At its August meeting, the committee set a Sept. 30 deadline for the completion of the 2005 yearbook, and a Nov. 30 deadline for the completion of the late 2006 edition. The committee will assess the progress of the two delayed yearbooks and decide whether to allow the staff to go forward with a 2007 book.

Parrish, who also is the adviser to both The Spirit and The Pacer, UTM’s student newspaper, said she finished the yearbook Monday morning.

In results of a campus-wide Internet-based poll carried out by SGA with 918 student participants, 61 percent of participants favored a yearbook fee, if the book is delivered each year in a timely manner, with 39 percent not favoring a yearbook at all.

Additionally, 58 percent prefer a hardbound, printed copy of The Spirit. Only 6 percent favored an online-only edition with an option for spiral-bound printing.

If the yearbook is printed, slightly more than half of student respondants favored a printed edition every year, with 45 percent only wanting a copy of the yearbook their senior year.

While in recent years many students have not had their photographs taken for the yearbook, 64 percent of participants in the SGA poll favored using their Skyhawk student ID photo for yearbook use.