“Best looking,” “Best to bring home to Mom and Dad,” and “Most likely to be a millionaire” are some of the superlatives that everyone enjoys hearing about and reading in his or her senior yearbook. For as long as most can remember, these awards were given to those who were nominated by their peers and who truly deserved it. Now, the system has been changed so that students may only nominate themselves or a friend for a superlative—will this accurately show Massapequa’s best and brightest?

Students are confused more than anything else. As of now, there have been no decisive discussions between the G.O, the Senior Class, and Sachem, leaving the student body in question as to what is going on.

“Teachers felt that there was a lot of pressure on students sometimes—to be a part of something instead of excluded,” Dr. Williams said as to why the way nominations were held has been changed. In hopes of protecting these students from peer pressure, the advisers have been contemplating changing the nomination method to self-nomination.

The students slightly accomplished changing the process back to the way nominations were done. A petition was made online for students to sign in order to change nominations back. The goal was to get 300 student signatures and present it to the advisers who made this decision.  After reaching the goal in a short two days, Dominic Esposito, the creator of the petition, discussed reverting superlative nominations to its old method with Mr. Hahn, the G.O adviser. After this discussion, they concluded with an informal agreement that the nominations should be changed back, but nothing has been formally stated.

Even voting has taken a change—but for better or for worse is under debate. After preliminary tallying, the final voting will not be done on paper anymore; it will be done on Castle Learning. The benefits involve saving paper and promoting Castle Learning; however, the possible detriments could be that only the friends of the nominees will vote, and many people do not even know their Castle Learning log-in names or IDs. “Not enough people are really going to go online—it’s oversimplification,” senior class President Mike Cantalupo said.

Rumors are going around about most of the things concerning senior superlatives—even whether it is happening or not. What will be the future of the yearbook of the Class of 2012? No final decisions have been made as of yet, but stay tuned with The Chief for the hopefully-soon-to-come update on the controversy concerning senior superlatives.