The Guilfordian won a first place in the American Scholastic Press Association’s annual contest for the third year running. The contest rated college papers across the country based on content coverage, editing, creativity, art, general plan and page design. The Guilfordian scored a perfect 350 for content coverage and a perfect 55 in creativity, with a total raw score of 936 out of 1,000. The Guilfordian tied for first with six other schools. Two of the co-winners were Point News of St. Mary’s College, and The Observer of Fordham University. Taylor University’s Echo and Norwich University’s Norwich Guidon tied for second in The Guilfordian’s division, which is based on college enrollment size.

Despite a shortage of photographers, The Guilfordian managed to score well in the art category.

“For the majority of the year we only had two photographers,” said photo editor Ben Lancaster. “But they knew their limitations and kept up the quality of their work.”

“This was a challenging year, given campus events, said Dana Professor of English and Guilfordian faculty advisor Jeff Jeske, “but the staff rose to the occasion. They learned much and showed great professionalism.”

With perfect scores in two categories, The Guilfordian hopes to be on its way to meeting the challenge by last year’s editor-in-chief Matt Haselton to “receive a perfect 1,000 score.”

Incoming editor-in-chief Josh Cohen, a junior, hopes to continue the tradition.

“I am looking forward to building on the foundation that my predecessor established,” said Cohen. “I hope that we can outdo Haselton and earn that first place ‘with distinction’ that he was gunning for.