Despite challenges faced by the COVID-19 pandemic, Tabulae and Menagerie were able to secure awards for their respective issues from the 2020-2021 school year.

“Most [other yearbooks] were probably talking about COVID, but we wanted to make it about coming out of the [prior] year,” co-editor-in-chief of Tabulae Marlo Armstrong ‘22 said. “We were far from normal, but we were still trying to get back to where we were [pre-COVID].”

This desire to create an innovative summation of the year in a unique time won Tabulae First Place with Special Merit and Outstanding Theme from the American Scholastic Press Association, Tabulae advisor Joseph Maffey said. 

“We really tried to find the ways to capture what it was like to be in that club as opposed to what it actually looked like, because that’s what people are going to look back on and hopefully remember, not the Zoom screens,” Maffey said.

Menagerie, though separate from Tabulae, also won First Place with Special Merit and Most Outstanding High School Literary-Art Magazine for 2021 by The American Scholastic Press Association, in addition to being named a Crown finalist by Columbia Scholastic Press Association, Menagerie advisor Mary Rohlicek said.

“Our current editors-in-chief were so nervous, because the last two years [we] have won Most Outstanding and so they’re like, ‘now we’ve got to go up against that,’” Rohlicek said. “But honestly [I think] we just really have a super talented group every year.”