Keeping with tradition, Echowan announced in the 6425 News it would distribute yearbooks June 25-26, but with safety precautions in place. Senior Rakesh Plantz said he is happy Echowan could keep the yearbook distribution tradition alive as most of the end of the year traditions are being canceled or postponed as a result of the pandemic.

“I know Echowan put in a lot of work to make this possible. I’m glad they can go the extra mile and keep everyone safe, while also giving us the yearbooks in memory of what happened this year,” Plantz said.

According to 6425 News, seniors can get their yearbooks from 9-11 a.m. June 25 in the parking lot by Door 1, followed by juniors from 11 a.m.-1 p.m. Then sophomores and freshmen can pick up their yearbooks from 9 a.m.-12 p.m June 26. People who haven’t bought a yearbook can buy one from 12-1 p.m. June 26 for $75 on a first-come, first-served basis. Senior Patrick Djerf, Echowan business editor, said if people cannot get their yearbooks at these time slots, there will be other options. 

“This is our first try at anything like this before and hopefully it will work. But, we’ll look out for other people that have travel plans or summer jobs,” Djerf said. “We’re just starting with this distribution at the end of the week to see how it goes, and we’re looking for other solutions to get books to people who are not able to come to get their yearbooks.”

Junior Rachel Stein, Echowan business manager, said the drive through plan was different from what Echowan had originally thought of as they worked together with the administration to come up with a plan.

“It was definitely guided by the administration and how they want and feel it would be the safest. So, it was a little bit different than we had originally imagined. But with their direction, we came up with some of the ways it can look like now,” Stein said. “It was difficult to come up with how it would look because we wanted to make sure that everybody is as safe as possible.”

Djerf said Echowan will be following social distancing guidelines as staffers will hand the yearbooks out with gloves and masks. Students and parents are required to drive through the parking lot with masks and photo ID.

“All the available staff will be there, and all of us will be socially distanced. Everyone coming through will be in their own enclosed space. The only time that we will have contact is looking at their IDs and passing the books to them,” Djerf said. “The plan we worked with the administration and our advisor to create has a very limited chance of transmitting the virus and a high chance of keeping everyone safe.”

Stein said although students can’t keep their normal traditions of going through the yearbooks together, there are possibilities to enjoy the traditions of the yearbooks online with other classmates.

“Unfortunately, you won’t have as much of that camaraderie between students where they get to look through the books in the lunchroom. However, I do think that we can try to incorporate this and encourage students to do that in other ways, such as posting some of their favorite photos of the yearbook on their Instagram or Snapchat stories or sharing pictures that they see of each other,” Stein said. “I’m hoping that we can have some of our PR editors possibly work on coming up with some ways to encourage that camaraderie among students.”