Roxbury Latin hosted the first inter-scholastic debate of the 2016-17 academic year on Sunday, Sept. 18.  120 debaters from 17 independent schools participated in the parliamentary-style tournament.RL won 3rd place in the overall School awards.  Andrew Steinberg II was the 3rd-place Advanced Speaker; Trey Sullivan III and Kalyan Palepu III were the 3rd-place Novice Team of 2.

Eton House Master Michael Grenier contacted Headmaster Kerry Brennan to report on RL’s latest envoy, Kevin Zhu ’16, whose selection as a Roxbury Latin Scholar at Eton College provided him with a gap year at the school founded by Henry VI.

“Here’s Kevin in his Eton finery—it’s only 30 degrees (Celcius) at the moment so he’s enjoying that lovely feeling of black wool and humidity. He is an absolute delight to have around and a real credit to RL and his parents ….”

The Roxbury Latin Scholarship at Eton College, awarded annually to an RL graduating senior, was established in 2005 by Margarita and Jack Hennessy ’54. Past Scholars include Matt Wang RL ’05, Fernando Rodriguez-Villa RL ’06, Sam Klug ’07, Jake Connolly ’08, Brendan Hanrahan ’09, Michael Beam ’10, Michael Rosengard ’11, Collin Epstein ’13, and Sam Balthazard ’14.

Kevin will matriculate at Harvard in the fall of 2017 after his year in England.

In July and August, 200 boys and girls, ages 5-13, participated in Mass Audubon’s Boston Nature Center Camp at Roxbury Latin. The School’s 117-acre campus includes more than 50 acres of beautiful, undisturbed forest, where campers – ninety-five percent of whom were from the City of Boston – explored and learned about the natural environment. When campers weren’t outside investigating vernal pools, picking blueberries, or exploring wooded trails, they created and played in the classrooms, art studio, theater, and gymnasium.

“The partnership is almost too good to be true,” says Elizabeth Carroll, an environmental science teacher at RL who helped spearhead the alliance. The School had been actively looking for ways to share its unique, urban forest resource with a broader community, and Mass Audubon wanted to reach a greater number of city kids via their Nature Center Camps. The two organizations’ philosophies about access to first-class educational programming, regardless of a family’s means, also overlapped perfectly. Mass Audubon’s sliding scale of camp tuition, based on household income, enabled seventy percent of campers to receive a significant camp scholarship this summer (almost half of campers paid $60 or less). At Roxbury Latin, where the admission process is need-blind, thirty-five percent of students receive financial aid, with an average grant of more than $22,000. 

“Starting a new camp at Roxbury Latin allowed hundreds of Boston children, with limited exposure to nature and forests, to start to fall in love with the outdoors,” says Erin Kelly, camp director at Mass Audubon’s Nature Center Camp at RL. “It gave them a summer filled with fun, hands-on and minds-on outdoor activities in a beautiful, natural setting—right here in the city.”

The Mass Audubon’s Boston Nature Center Camp, which employed eight RL students, was one of several camps and clinics at Roxbury Latin this summer—including soccer, football, and basketball clinics, a classical studies camp, and STEM and biotech camps. 

Pete Cahill ’15 and neighborhood friends Ryan Sweeney and Timmy Galvin returned from college this summer to continue their flagship hockey tournament, “The Dot Pot,” in Dorchester’s Garvey Park. Last year’s tournament raised donations for cancer victim Carl Hosea, who died shortly after the gathering. In its second iteration, this summer’s event honored the family of Michael Baker, a police officer who died this past spring. With momentum fueling this admirable community cause, the trio of organizers hoped to raise upwards of $13,000 for the hockey competition, which occurred last weekend. Read more on “The Dot Pot,” which the Boston Globe has featured for the second consecutive summer.