El Rodeo

Before its discontinuance in Spring 2006, El Rodeo was the official undergraduate yearbook of UC Davis. In 2006, publication was stopped indefinitely and the ASUCD unit was shut down due to chronic budget shortfalls and lack of demand for a yearbook (see Controversy section below). The yearbook could be purchased for about $80 in 2006.

AGTV took up residence inside El Rodeo's office in the summer of 2006. At the same time, a group of incoming freshmen formed a Facebook group and made a website (no longer in existence) about wanting a UCD yearbook. Nevertheless, no UC Davis yearbook has been printed since the 2005-2006 school year.

The Special Collections room at Shields Library has the entire set of yearbooks available for browsing; they're in the glass cases in the reading room.

About

The El Rodeo yearbook was a hardbound book averaging about 300 pages. It was split into 7 sections that included student life, academics, athletics, freshmen, seniors, greeks & organizations, and ads & index. Each section, with the exception of ads & index, was made up of different feature stories and photographs. It was created entirely by students during fall and winter quarter and published by Herff Jones, Inc. Graduating seniors could get their portraits taken for the yearbook free of charge by VIP Studios photographers during fall and winter quarters in the El Rodeo office.

History

The first yearbook was published in 1911 under the name of Agricola. During this time it was a small soft bound book with 100 pages or less. There was even a pop-up yearbook that was published during this time. Agricola's content was primarily literary-letters, jokes, poems, and agricultural articles, with a few pictures and a sports section. In 1917 the title of the book was changed to Farm Rodeo and again in 1922 to The Rodeo. The content of the book expanded during this time to include headshots of students and features on Homecoming and Picnic Day. In 1928, it was renamed El Rodeo, symbolizing both the Spanish fiesta and the "round-up" of the year's school activities. By the late 1960's, El Rodeo, primarily pictorial, was a book of 300 pages.

El Rodeo stopped publishing sometime around 1971 due to poor sales and lack of interest. A few attempts were made to revive it with yearbooks being published with sporadic frequency. It was restarted in its last form by ASUCD in the mid 1990's and continued until 2006, when it was canceled due to budgeting issue (primarily from 2004 and 2005) — see the controversy section below.

The theme of the 2005-2006 and final El Rodeo volume, which is 235 pages, is "Let There be Light."

Past Staff

2004-2005

Leah Zilversmit - editor in chief (fall), resigned December 2004 Grace Han, editor in chief (winter, spring)

2005-2006

Editors and Managers/Directors*

Grace Han, editor in chief; academics editor; greeks and organizations editor (winter)

Regina Wang, people editor; writer Talia Kennedy, student life editor (fall); writer (fall) Senaida Morales, athletics editor (fall); writer (fall) Jennifer Nguyen, design/proofs and quality control editor (fall) Amy Hauptman, copy editor; athletics editor (winter) John Cheng, photography editor (winter, spring) Caroline Velarde, business manager, writer Jena Turkheimer, marketing director (fall)

*Some of the editorial positions lasted only for short time periods, long enough for the editor to complete his or her section of the yearbook.

Writers and Photographers

Eric Duran, photographer Roberta Lin, photographer Megan Macklin, writer (winter, spring) Van Luu, photographer, writer Kathie Ngo, writer, photographer Natalie Carcavallo, writer, photographer RJ Taylor, photographer Julie Smith, photographer (fall) Katie Zieg, photographer Michelle Cabugao, photographer, writer

Controversy

In 2005, El Rodeo ordered 800 yearbooks, but only sold 450 (56%). Since each yearbook is obviously only good for one year, this created quite a budget problem for ASUCD. As of 2005, yearbooks were produced at $35 and sold for $85. This meant that there was $12,250 in virtually unsalable assets taking up space in the El Rodeo office — money that could have gone to offset cuts to the Entertainment Council, for example.

However, the real problem may have been a lack of interest among potential buyers. If only 450 books were sold to a class of 5,735 graduating seniors, only 7.85% of seniors wanted a yearbook. In 2006, El Rodeo planned to reduce production to 650 yearbooks.

This wasn't the only year that El Rodeo has had problems keeping to budget. The unit received a $5,000 subsidy, but often ended up losing over $20,000. For this reason, the 2006 edition was the last one printed. In a world with Facebook and the MySpace, as well as many people graduating in more than four years, one must wonder what purpose a yearbook now serves.