It has been 100 years since Mills published its first yearbook, the 1915-1916 The Chimes yearbook.
The yearbook was created to document the campus development and student lives. Before The Chimes yearbook, students created detailed scrapbooks that chronicled their lives at Mills.
The Mills yearbook went through various name changes: The Chimes, Mills College Junior Yearbook, Myrtaceae, Mills College Yearbook, and the current The Mills Crest. According to the 1943 The Mills Crest yearbook, the yearbook staff and Executive Board settled on the name The Mills Crest — creating a newly designed yearbook that would give students a “greater opportunity to show their talents in writing and photography.”
“These yearbooks through the twentieth century are an invaluable tool in seeing what life was like here,” Editor-in-Chief Iona De La Torre said.
During the century, there have been a total of 96 Mills yearbooks published; no yearbooks were published from 1916 to 1918, due to World War I, and 1920. The junior class oversaw the yearbook’s creation after 1921. Eventually the yearbook became volunteer based, allowing all grades to contribute.
Earlier yearbooks were text heavy, giving great detail about student lives and activities (sports, clubs, customs) and developments made to the campus. In many yearbooks, students were organized by which dormitory hall they lived in rather than grade level. During global events like World War II in the early 1940’s, yearbooks were focused on Mills students’ war efforts.
This year’s 2015-2016 yearbook will mark the Centennial yearbook of the yearbook publication. This is the fourth centennial celebration at Mills that the yearbook has celebrated: 1952 Centennial yearbook of Mills College, 1985 Centennial yearbook of Mills chartered as a college, and 2002 Bicentennial yearbook of Mills College.
