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Recent grads might not know that they’re missing out on a yearbook, but the vast majority of graduating classes from Wisconsin were lucky enough to have a student-led yearbook staff to compile campus memories for them. The class of 1885 was the first to have its own yearbook — originally called Trochos. The editor wrote that the book “introduces a new era in University life, and we hope that each of the years to come may see the production of a creditable and flourishing Annual.” Those hopes didn’t last long; the yearbook skipped two years. Members of the class of 1888 took up the mantle with this playful editor’s note: “Let us not do like unto the Juniors of ’86 and ’87. Let us not be fearful in heart, let us put forth a book like unto the first, whose reading was for the troubling of the nations.” There wasn’t another break in publication until 2004, and the Badger was brought back again in 2005. The last yearbook published by the UW student yearbook staff was in 2014. The following year, there were two coeditors in chief who planned to take over, but one became ill, and no one knows what happened to the other. With no editor in chief, the 2015 Badger never came to fruition, and no student was trained to take over the organization. We’re hoping this is just another hiatus in the long history of the Badger and that a future group of students will again produce “nation-troubling” yearbooks. In the meantime, you can relive the glory days from 1885, 1888–2003, or 2005–14 in the UW digital collection of yearbooks.

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