If you’ve seen the red-and-black shirts that Octagon staffers have been proudly wearing around campus lately, you know that “we do it in the Cave.”

But, what exactly is it that we do in the Cave—that oversized closet in the far corner of the high school that’s home to six computers, a microwave, a refrigerator, a couch, a mini-TV, and the school’s 22 Octagon staff members?

Well, sorry, but I can’t tell you. It would be against the rules of The Octagon’s privacy policy created back in 1977, the year the first newspaper was published.

And although a lot has changed since the creation of Volume I, according to previous staffers, on its 30-year anniversary, many of the paper’s traditions, goals, and qualities have remained the same.

The Beginning

When long-time adviser Patricia Fels started her career in 1976 at age 22, then-headmaster Clayton J. “Pat” Tidey hired her to start newspapers for SCDS’s middle and high schools.

However, because only three high-school students signed up for journalism, the staff created a literary magazine instead.

Luckily, more interest in a newspaper developed by the next year, and the first Octagon was published Oct. 20, 1977, under editor-in-chief Tierney Smail Korotkin, ‘79.

Essentially, the first issue consisted of an 11 x 17 in. piece of paper folded in half. Cartoonist Ken Press, ’81, described it as a “handout with awful, microscopic reddish-brown ink.”

Created by a team of 13 dedicated writers—eight of whom were middle-school students—the paper contains a total of three photographs and consists of four “pages.”

Yet, amazingly, the staff fit 23 stories into the tiny newspaper. Each column is exactly 1.5 in. and modularity (a newspaper-design convention requiring that all stories and their associated graphics be laid out in the form of a rectangle) wasn’t yet part of the Octagon world.

But before you think about mocking this first issue, consider the circumstances: no digital cameras, no computers, and no spell-check.

In fact, the staff didn’t even have a Cave. Stories were first written by hand; then, after multiple drafts, they would be given to staff members designated as “typists,” who would type all of the articles. These typewritten pages, along with some photographs and comics, were sent to the print shop at Mesa Verde High School, where printers typeset the articles, formatted the paper’s layout, and printed out copies.

In effect, the staff actually had little control over what the paper looked like—the Mesa Verde printers decided on everything from picture size to the placement of stories to the text’s font.

In one case, the printers went a little too far. In the second issue of Volume I, “we had a series of articles on unusual occupations,” said Jane Sooby, ’81, a three-year editor and assistant editor for the first volume.

“Joey Fong [‘82, a reporter] wrote a story about a mortician. It was an interesting story, but it was too long to fit in one issue, so we were going to make it continue into our next issue.

“To make people want to read the remainder of the story in the next issue, the last line of the story in this issue was going to be ‘On the table lay a dead body,’” Sooby said. “Weirdly enough, when it was printed, this last line wasn’t there.”

It turned out that the printer at Mesa Verde was the brother of the mortician in the story, and his brother told him that the article couldn’t be printed as written or else he would lose his job.

Distraught by Mesa Verde’s censoring of an Octagon story, Fels and the staff found a new printer, The Aardvark.

Transition

The Aardvark was a community newspaper located in midtown that allowed The Octagon, along with a number of other high-school newspapers, to use their “high-tech” equipment to produce the paper.

Switching to Aardvark also allowed the staff to gain more control over the newspaper’s layout.

“We would submit our articles to Aardvark, and [they] would typeset them and send them back on glossy, wax-coated paper in columns,” said columnist Steve Davis, ‘82, who also became The Octagon’s adviser from 1986-87, when Fels was in England.

“Then, we would spend an evening at The Aardvark cutting up the columns with X-Acto knives and literally ‘pasting up’ the paper.”

“They would use a special blue pencil to map out where everything was supposed to go,” cartoonist Doug Press, ’83, said. “I was glad I never had to do it because it looked like a very painstaking job.”

Photos and headlines also were done separately.

“You had to make headlines using a machine in the complete dark,” Fels said. “If there was any light on while the headlines were developed, they would just turn completely black. It was like a photo lab. Each headline would take me about 15 minutes to set.”

“I’m now a professional reporter and my whole life is on the Internet,” said editor-in-chief Tim Grieve, ’82, who currently writes a political blog for salon.com. “I really don’t understand how we did our jobs 10-15 years ago.”

Five Octagon locations on campus, four printing companies, two Caves, and 30 years later, our technology has advanced.

About five years ago we started being able to scan and edit actual photos and print them out on 11 x 17 in. sheets of paper from our own printer.

“I just thought it was the most amazing thing!” Fels said.

“Before [using digital photos], we had to send in [photographs] to get sized, and all our pictures had to be done in advance. We also only had two well-functioning computers,” editor-in-chief Elise Craig, ‘02, said.

The Octagon staff now has six flat-screen computers, along with a Web site.

Dearly Departed

Over the years, along with technology, the paper itself has progressed. However, much of our current success is owed to Octagon veterans.

Practically everyone who has ever been on staff agrees that The Octagon was a defining factor of their high-school experience.

“The best part was the camaraderie with the other students and with Ms. Fels,” editor-in-chief Kate Heitman, ’01, said.

“I have fond memories of fighting with Fels about watching ‘Dawson’s Creek’ [during paste-up]. Sometimes when she would leave the room or go home for something, we would turn [the TV] on. We would also plot how to steal her pen, but never had the guts.”

“I really enjoyed paste-up,” news editor David Russell, ’99, said. “Sure, it was a lot of work, and my homework wouldn’t be done for the next day; but I remember fondly the late nights, when everyone got a little loopy and the inside jokes among the staff were a little bit funnier.

“Friendships were made and bonds were formed in the Cave that didn’t exist anywhere else on campus.”

Some Octagon staffers went on to become reporters and editors for their college newspapers, and then, upon graduating, for professional newspapers.

Among them are Craig, currently a news producer for washingtonpost.com; Grieve at salon.com; sports editor Randy Johnson, currently a sports reporter for The Weekly Calistogan in Calistoga; columnist Adam Braver, ‘81, who has published three novels; editor-in-chief Chris Springer, ‘85, a current freelance writer; editor-in-chief Zach Goldstein, ’02, who was executive editor of The Dartmouth, his college paper; and editor-in-chief Victoria Loustalot, ’03, who works for TheOnion.com and recently had an article published in The New York Times.

And of those who didn’t go into journalism, many found the newspaper to be influential.

“I think The Octagon helped to foster a love of language that persists to this day. Though I am in a design profession [architecture], it’s important to me that I write as well as draw, so I make an effort to publish when I can,” editor-in-chief Jessica Niles DeHoff, ‘96, said.

“Asking hard questions, listening and sorting through competing information, navigating the tensions and dramas of working with a diverse group of people, interpreting and presenting other people’s words, classifying and organizing, coming up with leads, prioritizing, meeting and juggling deadlines—all of this, of course, is about critical thinking, writing and organizing,” editor-in-chief Ashley Tidey, ’83, said.

“What could be more important?”



NOTE: To see additional photographs and a timeline associated with this story, please click the "Download PDF Version of Paper" link on the left-hand column of this webpage.