A refreshing new approach to a long held tradition: students here at Appleton North gathered to fix an underlying issue with the Senior Superlatives. With most of the superlatives you see in the yearbooks from the past, they seem to target only one social group and instead of it becoming a way to unify the senior class, it breaks them up into being a popularity contest.

But, this year the seniors wanted to promptly relieve the stigma behind the superlatives and, to quote the classic movie High School Musical, have this be “the start of something new.” What they are doing to revamp this includes having MORE superlatives that reach ALL of the different types of friend groups. There are now 18 superlatives that seniors can vote on.

Brittany Horn, the creator of this change and senior editor of the yearbook, explains her reasoning behind the switch: “I have been told so many times it has been a popularity contest. So I thought how can I make this more broad and affect all the students.” She thought, “Is there a way I can make it more exciting this year?” So she and her marketing team came up with the idea to do an award show for seniors to attend to hand out the awards to the winners of each category. 

The seniors are responding extremely well to the change and have only said positive things. “I think it’s awesome because I thought that our senior class lacked in coming together. I also think that it was a good idea to have two winners– it didn’t have to be male or female. Creating more categories I liked because it was more inclusive and fun,” Madelyn Kapheim says.