The Octagon was recently nominated for a Crown Award, a prize given by the Columbia Scholastic Press Association (CSPA) to middle-school, high-school and college newspapers, magazines and yearbooks nationwide.

This is the Octagon’s first nomination, although the newspaper has entered the competition over 15 times.

Nominees will receive either a Gold Crown or Silver Crown at the CSPA’s 88th annual convention on Friday, March 16, at Columbia University in New York City.

According to the CSPA website, the Crown Awards are the most prestigious of CSPA awards and are awarded for overall excellence in journalism.

The Gold Crown was created in 1982, with the Silver Crown following two years later as a second-place award.

Adviser Patricia Fels believes that the Octagon previously hadn’t been nominated due to its lack of contemporary design.

“I believe what tipped it this year is Nicole’s art,” Fels said. Nicole Antoine, ‘11, was an editor-in-chief last year.

The CSPA requested designs for a CD of collections from Crown finalists, and two of the three pages they requested were Antoine’s designs, such as the spread on technology and cheating (Feb. 15, 2011) and the spread about teachers’ previous lives (Nov. 2, 2010).

The other was current editor-in-chief Mollie Berg’s back-page feature design design (Dec. 7, 2010) which featured a story about an alumna avoiding the “golden handcuffs” of debt.

Antoine believes that increased use of color pages and longer issues contributed to the nomination.

Previous editor-in-chief Parul Guliani, ‘11, who is a freshman at Columbia, will attend the ceremony to accept the award.

“(The nomination) made me really, really happy,” Guliani said. “That made up for not winning the Pacemaker, all right.”

Last year’s Octagon was also nominated for a Pacemaker, the highest award given by the National Scholastic Press Association, but did not win the award.