For the first time since the pandemic, Saint Mary’s College will see the return of The Blue Mantle, the student yearbook.
Junior editor-in-chief Claire Lorin always questioned why Saint Mary’s didn’t have a yearbook, and once she mentioned the idea of reviving The Blue Mantle to a group of her friends, they wanted to be a part of the renewal.
“I originally found out about The Blue Mantle during my sophomore year when I was one of the Student Government Mission Co-Chairs. My chair and I were in the process of bringing back Heritage Week. We were told that there were past yearbooks we could see in the Saint Mary’s archives, which we used to bring back for the week,” Lorin wrote to The Observer. “The discontinuation of The Blue Mantle was due to inconsistencies and the pandemic at the time.”
To revive or start a new club at Saint Mary’s, one must go through the Office of Student Involvement (OSI) and find an advisor before outlining the club’s structure. Lorin ran the idea of renewing the yearbook by OSI during finals week of spring 2025. Then, once approved by the administration, they began all the paperwork, including the constitution, timelines and the organization’s structure.
When looking for an advisor for The Blue Mantle, they immediately went to Bill Svelmoe, a professor of history at Saint Mary's College. Svelmoe, who has been at Saint Mary’s for 25 years, didn’t realize that The Blue Mantle had even been defunct and “was very impressed with student efforts to revive the group.”
“I thought this was a great thing because we have Blue Mantles out in our offices and we used to use them as professors all the time, especially when we’d hear from an alum, and we’d like to try to remember exactly who they were, so we’d look back through pages,” Svelmoe said.
When Lorin and fellow students brought this idea of bringing The Blue Mantle back to life, the administration was not convinced at first, but with time, this has changed.
"Well, it’s just a huge thing, and they had a lot they wanted to see, and these students have met every goal and expectation so far. So now the administration, I think, is very much behind them,” Svelmoe said.
Svelmoe explained that Saint Mary’s administration wanted to ensure that Lorin and the rest of The Blue Mantle staff could follow through with their ideas, especially those related to finances and how goals would be met. To this, Svelmoe added that students had met every goal set by the administration, describing it as a very big undertaking to revive the yearbook.
Once fall came, Lorin and her vice president, Grace Braselton, built a staff by recruiting students through Instagram, word of mouth and involvement fairs. Lorin and Braselton conducted interviews for their committee chairs in the summer so that they could finally bring the yearbook back.
“I truly believe the importance of The Blue Mantle is to document Saint Mary’s history. Every student who walks the halls, every professor who teaches and every department that aids student life are what make this community. Being able to document it and give names to the people who make Saint Mary’s what it is is just as important as the campus and buildings in themselves,” Lorin said.
The Blue Mantle is planned to debut for Saint Mary’s students later this fall.
