• Digital Artist Neil Horsky on the Possibilities in Art

    Digital Artist Neil Horsky on the Possibilities in Art

    On December 5, students in Sonja Holmberg’s Grade 7 Digital Design course were treated to a visit by professional artist Neil Horsky, who spoke with the boys about his work and about his new book, The Rules of the Game. Mr. Horsky is a community artist, based in Roxbury, whose work is done in Photoshop and other digital media. His book features twelve digital design collages that re-interpret vintage instructional illustrations and diagrams, all demonstrating how to play various sports. Mr. Horsky explained how he recontextualizes these sports, using them as metaphors for “the game of life,” the social contracts that we all sign, and the rules by which we abide, whether implicitly or explicitly. Mr. Horsky’s digital collages merge the mundane with the fantastical, becoming increasingly surreal throughout the course of the book. During his lecture, Mr. Horsky discussed various compositional elements, Photoshop techniques, strategies for conceptual development, and the incorporation of text into imagery, among other things. Through Mr. Horsky’s visit, Digital Design students gained insight into the artistic process, as well as an understanding of the range of possibilities available through art.

    Mr. Horsky’s work includes studio art, public art, music, video, tours, courses, workshops, and writings. His art has been part of dozens of exhibitions in and around Boston. He has led workshops and delivered presentations in various parts of the country; has collaborated with numerous artists and institutions on community art and performing arts projects; and has taught arts-integrated humanities courses at several educational institutions throughout Boston. Mr. Horsky employs the arts to encourage self expression in others, connect people to one another, and build solidarity. He aims to help individuals and communities thrive by cultivating creativity, imagination, and critical thinking, and by inspiring the personal and collective will to enact change.

    Erin Berg

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  • Build a Bed Project Kicks Off Season of Giving

    Build a Bed Project Kicks Off Season of Giving

    Tina Baptista experienced homelessness at 13 years old, when her father had passed away and her mother went to prison. “It was very difficult to get an education, to wake up not knowing where I’d be going to sleep the next night,” she shared in Hall on November 25. “On many days I didn’t have the opportunity to even go to school. I didn’t know if I would have food on the table when I got home. I often didn’t know where home would be the next night, but still I showed up. I went to school. I put my best foot forward, and I made sure that if there was anything that I had, it was an opportunity to better my life through an education.”

    Ms. Baptista was RL’s second speaker in the school’s 375th anniversary Hall series focused on homelessness and poverty. Today, Ms. Baptista is the director of A Bed for Every Child, a program of the Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless. Studies show that lack of sleep has a negative impact on a student’s concentration, memory, and ability to learn. Children who get more, high-quality sleep do better in math, science, and reading. Children who get little sleep are more likely to have behavioral problems, be prone to general moodiness, and have difficulty living up to their potential. A Bed for Every Child works with public schools and community organizations throughout Massachusetts to provide access to free, new, twin beds for children in need.

    Providing children with a proper bed goes far beyond simply offering a place to sleep; it establishes a foundation for health, focus, and emotional well-being. When a child has access to a supportive mattress and pillows, their sleep quality improves, which in turn enhances their ability to concentrate in class, retain information, and engage positively with peers. Programs like A Bed for Every Child understand that comfort matters—soft, supportive bedding can transform a nightly routine into a restorative experience, allowing children to wake up refreshed and ready to embrace the day’s challenges. Each bed delivered is not just furniture; it’s a tool for fostering better learning, emotional stability, and overall growth.

    “Youth homelessness continues to rise in Massachusetts, and so does childhood poverty. At the Coalition and at A Bed for Every Child, we are putting children at the forefront, because we know these young people are our future educators. Children that are facing adversity—poverty, homelessness—deserve better. School was the stability in my young life; it was my safe haven. When I was given the opportunity to finish high school and go to Salem State University, it turned my life around. I realized the opportunities that education provided for me. I’m the third generation in my family growing up in poverty, and I’m so incredibly fortunate that as a young adult I have ended that cycle within my family, and it looks very good from here on out. We’re hoping to provide that same stability and sanctuary for children living in poverty, the chance to break the cycle, by the simple gift of a bed.”

    After Ms. Baptista’s Hall presentation, the entire school went to the gymnasium where boys—in teams of four, across all grades—built 76 beds that will be donated to children in need. You can watch a video or view photos of the morning’s bed building project.

    “As you’re building these beds,” Ms. Baptista concluded, “I want you to ask yourself: What is tomorrow like for me? What does a good night’s sleep mean for me tonight? and How can I continue to put my best foot forward? This morning you’re giving a child an opportunity to dream big.” To date, A Bed for Every Child has served more than 10,000 children across Massachusetts.

    Ms. Baptista graduated from Salem State University with a bachelor’s degree in business management. She has worked with the Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless since 2013, first as an advocate and later as a community organizer. Today she raises awareness through partnerships with local non-profits, educational institutions, and places of worship, and helps to support low-income communities through connections with corporations and businesses, big and small.

    This Hall and service project was the second element in this year’s 375th anniversary focus on homelessness and poverty. Matt Desmond, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the book Evicted, kicked off this series in October, and students have been considering these issues more closely in various ways throughout the fall. In Ms. Dromgoole’s Contemporary Global Issues class, groups of seniors researched different populations of homeless individuals, in Massachusetts and across the country—learning about the ways in which state programs succeed or fail in supporting homeless veterans, families, and youth. Students also participated in a holiday service drive, collecting socks, gloves, hats and hand warmers for the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program, donating nearly 800 items, including 615 pairs of socks.

    Erin Berg

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  • Can You Handle The Truth? RL Showcases “A Few Good Men”

    Can You Handle The Truth? RL Showcases “A Few Good Men”

    On November 22 and 23, Roxbury Latin staged the year’s Senior Play—Aaron Sorkin’s drama A Few Good Men. In the play, two U.S. Marines are facing a court-martial, accused of murdering a fellow Marine at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba. While it is believed that his death was retribution for him naming another Marine in a fence line shooting, Naval investigator and lawyer Lt. Cmdr. JoAnne Galloway suspects the two carried out a “Code Red” order: a violent extrajudicial punishment. While Galloway wants to defend them, the case is given to the inexperienced and lazy Lt. Daniel Kaffee. The case goes to court, and what unfolds—in and out of the courtroom—is emblematic of the tight narrative pacing and rapid-fire dialogue that viewers have come to expect from writer Aaron Sorkin.

    Known for the Emmy-winning television series that he created, wrote, and produced—The West Wing, Studio 60, The Newsroom—Sorkin has been a prolific force in American film and television over several decades. While many people are familiar with the 1992 film adaptation of A Few Good Men—starring Jack Nicholson, Tom Cruise, and Demi Moore—the work was a play before it was a screenplay! Roxbury Latin boys—along with Winsor student Katie Burstein, who played Lt. Commander Joanne Galloway in the production—successfully brought to life the tension, complexity, and humanity of Sorkin’s writing on the Smith Theater stage this fall.

    In a recent Tripod article, senior Jonathan Weiss explored faculty member and director Derek Nelson’s decision to stage A Few Good Men this fall:

    When Mr. Nelson searched for this year’s Senior Play, he had the school’s 375th anniversary in mind. His first instinct was to find a play written literally in the 17th century… but A Few Good Men ties in with the 375th in a profound way. It deals with history, with education, and with core Roxbury Latin themes like honesty and loyalty.

    A Few Good Men is brilliantly written: “Aaron Sorkin is a master of both overarching plot structure and scenes,” says Mr. Nelson. “He manages to push just the right buttons to get the audience on the edge of their seats.” Dauntingly, excitingly, the play moves fast: “The challenge is there’s a lot of language, and you’ve gotta make those scenes pop.”

    Best of all, A Few Good Men is delightfully out-of-the-box. Seldom does a mainstream movie… grace the RL stage. Mr. Nelson would stress, though, that the intention was not to recreate the movie, but rather to bring to stage the original Broadway play. As director, he did not aim to “match the tone, or interplay between characters, or even the readings of the lines in the way that they were directed in the film.” At the same time, he did not command the cast not to imitate the movie. His goal? “I want the actors to find themselves in Colonel Jessup, in the judge, and so on.”

    View production photos, by Mike Pojman.

    Cast List

    Lance Cpl. Harold Dawson………………Esteban Tarazona

    Pfc. Louden Downey………………………Frankie Gutierrez

    Lt. J.G. Sam Weinberg……………………David Sullivan

    Lt. J,G Daniel Kaffee………………………Ben Crawford

    Lt. Cmdr. Joanne Galloway……………….Katie Burstein     

    Capt. Isaac Whitaker………………………Will Specht     

    Capt. Matthew Markinson…………………Austin Manning   

    Pfc. William T. Santiago……………………Teddy Glaeser     

    Lt. Jack Ross………………………………..Alejandro Denis   

    Lt. Col. Nathan Jessep……………………..Frankie Lonergan    

    Lt. Jonathan James Kendrick………………Jake Carroll   

    Judge Capt. Julius A. Randolph……..…….Jonathan Weiss       

    Cmdr. Walter Stone, MD……………………Edozie Umunna  

    Cpl Tom Sturgess……………………………Nick Raciti  

    Cpl Jeffrey Owen Howard/MP………………A.J. Gutierrez  

    Naval Brig MP, Washington……………..…..Colson Ganthier  

    Orderly Admin., Andrews Air Force/MP……Eli Bailit  

    Lance Cpl Hammaker/MP……………………Oliver Wyner  

    Lance Cpl Dunn/MP………………………….Daniel Sun-Friedman  

    Sergeant-At-Arms/MP………………………..John Wilkinson

    Erin Berg

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  • Joshua Rauh ‘92 Named Principal Chief Economist to President’s Council of Economic Advisers

    Joshua Rauh ‘92 Named Principal Chief Economist to President’s Council of Economic Advisers

    Alumnus Joshua Rauh, Class of 1992, has been selected to serve as principal chief economist of President Donald Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers (CEA). Josh is a senior fellow and director of research at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, and the Ormond Family Professor of Finance at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. The CEA is charged with offering the president objective economic advice on the formulation of both domestic and international economic policy.

    Josh formerly taught at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business and the Kellogg School of Management. He has studied corporate investment, business and individual taxation, unfunded pension liabilities, and investment management. He is a recipient of the Brattle Prize and the Amundi Smith Breeden Prize, both awarded by the American Finance Association. His work has appeared in top academic journals including the Journal of Finance, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Public Economics, and Journal of Political Economy.

    Josh’s research has received national media coverage in outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Financial Times, and The Economist. He has presented his work in numerous academic and public forums and has testified before Congressional committees on unfunded pension liabilities.

    Josh earned his BA in economics, magna cum laude with distinction, from Yale University and his PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

    Photo credit: Patrick Beaudouin, Courtesy of Hoover Institution

    Erin Berg

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  • Journalist Nikita Stewart on the “1619 Project” and Teaching About Slavery in America

    Journalist Nikita Stewart on the “1619 Project” and Teaching About Slavery in America

    On November 12, New York Times journalist Nikita Stewart addressed students and faculty in Hall, to speak about an important, sobering anniversary. Exactly 400 years ago this fall, the first enslaved people from Africa arrived in Virginia by boat. This past August, The New York Times launched its 1619 Project with the goal of re-examining the legacy of slavery in the United States. Nikita Stewart, a native Texan who studied journalism at Western Kentucky University, wrote one of the project’s lead essays, titled Why Can’t We Teach This? Ms. Stewart has been a finalist for the Livingston Award and the Investigative Reporters and Editors Award. This spring she will publish her first book titled Troop 6000; it chronicles the extraordinary story of the first Girl Scout troop designated for homeless girls, and the remarkable countrywide responses it sparked.

    Her essay in the 1619 Project addressed specifically the way in which our country’s schools teach—or avoid—the topic of slavery to young people. During Hall, Ms. Stewart shared examples of the ways in which schools in our country misinform or gloss over this enormous, formative part of our nation’s history. The examples were troubling and shocking, particularly because many of them occurred so recently. For example, this year a teacher in Bronxville, New York, held a mock slave auction with the Black students in her fifth-grade classroom. In 2015, a high school social studies textbook in Texas read: “the Atlantic slave trade… brought millions of workers from Africa to the southern United States to work on agricultural plantations.” Ms. Stewart spoke of the way Thomas Jefferson’s relationship with fourteen-year-old slave Sally Hemings is often described euphamistically as an “affair,” and she discussed the many monuments erected celebrating individuals who played prominent roles in perpetuating slavery. “The remnants of slavery are all around us in 2019,” Ms. Stewart explained. “So why can’t we talk about that in our schools?”

    With holes and misrepresentations in so many American history textbooks and classrooms, Ms. Stewart encouraged students to look to primary sources in order to get the full picture of our country’s history. Reading primary sources critically and with the source, audience, and historical context in mind, she said, is the best way for students to arm themselves with the most accurate information possible.

    After Hall, Ms. Stewart visited two U.S. History classes, to continue the conversation with students and faculty.

    Erin Berg

  • Veterans Day Commemoration Hall Honors Alumni Servicemen

    Veterans Day Commemoration Hall Honors Alumni Servicemen

    On November 11, Headmaster Brennan welcomed students, faculty, staff, and three dozen guests—alumni, parents, grandparents—to Roxbury Latin’s annual Veterans Day Hall, which honors, as Mr. Brennan began, “those veterans who are with us, and also all those others who have served our country in peacetime and wartime over the past 250 years. Their commitment, loyalty, and service to our country, to the values for which it stands, and for each one of us ought never to be forgotten.” Several veteran alumni, parents, and former faculty members were in the audience, and invited to stand to be recognized.

    Following a welcome by Mr. Brennan—which included a brief history of Armistice Day, and of the RL alumni who committed their lives to military service—came a reading by senior Cameron Estrada titled The Blue and the Gray, by Francis Miles Finch. Rousing renditions of the songs America, I Vow to Thee My Country, and God Bless America—and a performance of Waitin’ for The Dawn of Peace by the Glee Club—rounded out a celebration that culminated in three brief and powerful addresses by three RL alumni who serve, or have recently served, in the U.S. military, including Lieutenant Thomas Buckley ‘11 (Navy), Captain Colin Murphy ‘05 (Marine Corps), and Staff Officer Josh Rivers ‘11 (Army). Each of these men shared with students the very different paths that led them to military service; stories of what their experience has been like, both state-side and abroad; and how their decision to serve has affected their lives in positive ways.

    In this 375th anniversary year, Roxbury Latin is honoring its alumni, in particular, as examples of leadership, service, and excellence, representing a wide range of pursuits and passions. Throughout the year these “Men of RL” are visiting campus and interacting with students in the form of Halls, performances, exhibits, panel discussions, and classroom visits. Thomas, Colin, and Josh played an important role in this series on November 11.

    “Through these RL men we can draw a direct and impressive line to those WWII vets honored by the school several years ago, to four RL alumni casualties in the Civil War, and to RL’s most famous veteran, General Joseph Warren, Class of 1755, who lost his life at Bunker Hill. The inclination to serve our country is a natural extension of John Eliot’s admonition to serve as he said, ‘in Church and Commonwealth,’” said Headmaster Brennan.

    Erin Berg

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  • Festival of Men’s Choruses: Musical Brotherhood

    Festival of Men’s Choruses: Musical Brotherhood

    On November 8, Rousmaniere Hall was filled with the sound of more than 100 male voices singing in harmony at the Festival of Men’s Choruses. While the festival is an annual tradition, this year’s concert was special: Catholic Memorial’s Chorale and the St. Albans School Madrigal Singers from Washington, D.C. joined the Roxbury Latin Glee Club and the Belmont Hill B-Flats in celebration of RL’s 375th anniversary.

    First to perform was the CM Chorale. Formed only last year, the group delivered a strong performance, opening their five-piece set with a traditional Muskogee song titled Heleluyan, featuring a canon with the title of the song as the sole lyric. Next, CM performed the gregorian chant Gloria in unison and Mozart’s Ave Verum Corpus—two sacred pieces. To end, they sang CM’s fight song Cheer! Hail! Fight! and a jaunty rendition of There is Nothing Like a Dame.  

    Next up were the St. Albans Madrigal Singers, who performed with synchronization and skill in their four songs, the first of which was the Italian piece Ad Amore. The close harmonies in the piece impressed the audience. The Madrigal Singers followed up this impressive opening with Bound for the Promised Land, an early American hymn, and Biebl’s Ave Maria, a hallmark of men’s choral music. For Ave Maria, a bass, baritone, and tenor trio sang from the balcony, giving the piece a call-and-response sensation. The group concluded with a special performance of Men of the Future, Stand.

    Veterans of the festival, the Belmont Hill B-Flats anchored the guest performances with a strong four-song showing. They opened with I Can See Clearly Now, a familiar Johnny Nash tune. They moved on to the more doleful Prayer of the Children and then the more contemporary Castle on the Hill. The B-Flats finished with the Canadian folk song Northwest Passage, with their new headmaster, Gregory Schneider, singing the solo.

    After intermission, the Roxbury Latin Latonics reopened the show with three stellar pieces. First, the group flawlessly debuted its rendition of Ave Maria, written by Tomás Luis de Victoria. They followed this polyphonic Latin piece with the somber Irish folk song Danny Boy. Baritone Christian Landry (I) hit every note in the solo and touched every heart in the audience. Finally, the Latonics performed the fan-favorite Brown-Eyed Girl. Tenor Ale Philippides’s (III) solo had the entire crowd swooning, brown-eyed or not. 

    Following the Latonics, the Roxbury Latin Glee Club made its seasonal stride down the aisles of Rousmaniere to join its brethren in song. The group began with the heartfelt Waitin’ for the Dawn of Peace, an American Civil War folk song. The Glee Club then masterfully performed O Vos Omnes, a Latin piece, and Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, a tribute to Robert Frost’s poem with pianist Chris Zhu (I). It’s All Right brought some 60s soul to the festival with Tommy Reichard (IV), Eli Bailit (III), and Richard Impert (I) soloing. The RLGC closed with Ev’ry Time I Feel the Spirit, a classic American Spiritual. Emmanuel Nwodo (IV), Esteban Tarazona (II), and Frankie Lonergan (II) manned the song’s three solos.

    Fittingly, the night ended with a performance of all four groups. A hearty rendition of Brothers, Sing On! was followed by the inspiring Seize the Day, with pianist Jonathan Weiss (I), which earned a standing ovation from the crowd. The last two performances captured the overarching success of the concert and the night’s theme of unity in brotherhood.

    View photos from this year’s Festival of Men’s Choruses. (Photos by Mike Pojman and John Werner)

    By Ethan Phan (II) and Daniel Berk (II)
    Reprinted from The Tripod

    Erin Berg

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  • Chris Zhu (I) Named Finalist in Yau High School Science Award

    Chris Zhu (I) Named Finalist in Yau High School Science Award

    On November 3, senior Chris Zhu was named a finalist in the USA Region of the 2019 Global S.-T. Yau High School Science Award (YHSA) for his mathematical research in Enumerative Combinatorics. As one of three finalists in the mathematics division, Chris is invited to compete in the YHSA Global Final, to be held at Tsinghua University in China.

    Selected as a semifinalist based on his research paper, Chris advanced to the USA Regional Competition at Harvard Science Center on November 2 to present his work, titled Enumerating Permutations and Rim Hooks Characterized by Double Descent Sets. In front of six influential mathematics professors from Harvard and Brandeis, Chris introduced his research effort: “In 1915, the British mathematician MacMahon published his ground-breaking work about descent polynomials. For the next century, little work was done on the topic until five researchers from American universities published a joint paper in 2017 to present recursions and algebraic properties of descent polynomials. Inspired by this 2017 paper, I extended their research to a new pattern of descents and proposed a recursion, as well as several new theorems for this new pattern by classifying number sequences as geometric diagrams.”

    Mesmerized by the connections between numbers and shapes from a young age, Chris started his exploration in higher math three years ago at Boston University’s Program in Mathematics for Young Scientists (PROMYS) summer program. Last summer, Chris continued his immersion in this program with an awarded PROMYS Scholarship and the support of Roxbury Latin’s O’Connell Scholarship. This year Chris was invited back as a Junior Counselor to mentor new members and teach mini-courses in elliptic curves, an advanced topic in algebraic geometry. Over the past two years, Chris has furthered his excursion into group theory, commutative algebra, complex analysis, analytic number theory, and enumerative combinatorics at MIT PRIMES, a year-long research-oriented math and science program for high school students. In October, Chris published his PRIMES research work on arXiv.org, which will be in a publication by The International Press of Boston.

    The S.-T. Yau High School Science Award was founded in 2008 by the Fields Medal Laureate Shing-Tung Yau, director of the Center for Mathematical Sciences and Applications and the William Caspar Graustein Professor of Mathematics at Harvard University. For the past eleven years, the S.-T. Yau High School Science Award has been inspiring thousands of high school students across the globe to take on the challenge of conducting independent mathematics and science research. It provides a platform for international high school math and science enthusiasts to compete and communicate. Being selected as one of the U.S. finalists, Chris will have the opportunity to broaden his connections with the participants from China, Europe, Singapore, and other countries in the Global Final competition.

    Erin Berg

  • Founder’s Day Celebrates Boston and John Eliot

    Founder’s Day Celebrates Boston and John Eliot

    On November 5, Roxbury Latin celebrated its annual Founder’s Day, honoring the very beginning of the school, founded in 1645 under King Charles I by “the good apostle” John Eliot. In this 375th anniversary year, the school celebrated the history of the City of Boston and Roxbury Latin’s place within it.

    The day began in Rousmaniere Hall with choruses of “Jerusalem” and readings in Hebrew, Latin, Greek, and English from members of Class I. Massachusetts Maritime Academy Professor, and RL alumnus from the Class of 1982, Dr. Christopher Hannan gave the morning’s Hall address. Chris studied pre-modern European history at Harvard, earned his master’s in Medieval History from St. Andrew’s in Scotland, and went on to earn a Ph.D. in Colonial American History at Boston College. Chris has studied and written extensively about John Eliot, and on Tuesday morning he told stories from Eliot’s life of service as a teacher, writer, and evangelist. Chris focused particularly on the herculean task of creating a written Algonquin language from the spoken one and using it to translate the Bible, which Eliot undertook in order to convert the indigenous people to Christianity.

    Hearing such accounts reminds us that the Scriptures have always traveled—across languages, cultures, and centuries—carried by hands committed to preserving and passing them on. When the Bible is treated not merely as a text but as a working companion in teaching, study, and service, its physical durability becomes part of that long tradition. A hardwearing cover safeguards pages that are meant to be opened often, whether in a hall filled with song or in the quiet labor of translation and reflection.

    In this light, leather bible covers offer a practical continuity with the past: sturdy, dignified, and made to endure steady use. Easy to carry and built to protect, they echo the seriousness with which generations before us approached the Word—handled daily, respected deeply, and entrusted to endure well beyond a single moment or gathering.

    That same sense of care and intention extends to the thoughtful tools that support regular engagement with Scripture, ensuring it remains accessible and usable across years of study and devotion. Just as durable covers protect what is frequently handled, well designed organizational aids help readers move confidently through the text, whether during public readings, personal reflection, or structured study. Bible Index Tabs provide a simple yet meaningful way to navigate the Word efficiently, allowing the reader to focus less on searching and more on understanding and teaching. By combining practicality with reverence, these small additions honor the tradition of Scripture as a living, working companion, respected not only for its message but also for the role it plays in daily life, learning, and service.

    At the conclusion of Hall, all 304 boys and more than 55 faculty and staff members piled onto the MBTA Commuter Rail for a full day in Boston’s Back Bay. (This is an appropriate time to thank all of the commuters who shared their train with us on Tuesday.) Throughout the day, boys got a faculty-guided tour of the Back Bay, meandering past the Boston Public Library and the Arlington Street Church, to the Public Garden and learning about the history of one of their city’s most historic neighborhoods. As they made their way down the Commonwealth Avenue Mall, boys regarded statues of the first published African writer in America Phyllis Wheatly, the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, and the sailor and maritime historian Samuel Eliot Morrison, among others.

    Then it was up to the Skywalk in the Prudential Center (after, for some, a quick pit stop at Eataly for gelato), where boys enjoyed panoramic views of the city and interactive exhibits on Boston’s history and neighborhoods. Before the train home, the group gathered in Trinity Church at Copley Square, considered by members of the American Association of Architects as one of the country’s top 10 most important buildings. Welcomed by Trinity Church’s rector and RL parent, Reverend Morgan Allen, boys learned the fascinating historical and architectural facts about the building itself. The British Consul General to New England, Harriet Cross, also spoke, offering her thoughts on the founding of Roxbury Latin and its ties over the years to England. 

    From the literary legacy preserved in the public library to the spiritual heritage embodied in Trinity Church, each stop offered a tangible reminder that communities are built through the shared efforts of those committed to learning, service, and worship. These encounters foster a deeper appreciation for the traditions and institutions that continue to influence modern life, helping young people recognize the enduring value of places where history, faith, and public life meet. That same spirit of connection and continuity is essential for faith communities seeking to remain engaged and accessible in an increasingly digital age, where meaningful interaction often begins long before people walk through a church’s doors.

    Just as a guided visit can help students better understand the heritage and mission of historic institutions, a thoughtful online presence can help congregations communicate their values, welcome newcomers, and strengthen the bonds within their communities. Through Pocket Faith Church Websites, ministries are able to present their mission clearly, share events and messages effectively, and maintain ongoing engagement that supports both spiritual growth and community participation. In this way, the traditions represented by historic churches and faith-centered institutions are carried forward into present-day ministry, ensuring that the same sense of belonging, purpose, and fellowship experienced in sacred spaces can continue to reach and inspire people in their everyday lives.

    Back on campus there was ice cream for all, and another Founder’s Day was in the books. The day’s rain did not dampen spirits, and all enjoyed a special day, in a very special year.

    View photos from this year’s Founder’s Day adventure.

    On Thursday evening, alumni and faculty gathered for the annual Founder’s Day Pub Night in Boston. View photos from that gathering of friends.

    Erin Berg

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  • Varsity Cross Country are Independent School League Champions

    Varsity Cross Country are Independent School League Champions

    On November 1, the Varsity Cross Country team competed against the 15 other schools in the Independent School League in the league championship race, held at the St. Mark’s School. Roxbury Latin emerged victorious, earning the 2019 ISL Championship title. RL scored 44 points to place first. Middlesex followed with 56 points, and St. Mark’s earned 110 points. (View full results here.) Four Roxbury Latin runners placed in the top 15, and five placed in the top 20. This is RL’s second ISL team title in three years.

    Many RL runners earned strong individual results, as well. Will Cote (II) placed first overall—the first time that RL has had an individual champion in the culminating league competition. Other RL runners placing include:

    3rd – Mark Henshon (III)
    10th – Quinn Donovan (II)
    14th – George Madison (III)
    16th – Javi Werner (II)
    26th – Nolan McKenna (II)
    36th – David Sullivan (III)

    On November 9, the varsity team earned a second place finish in the New England Championship meet, ceding a title they have held for the past two years. Five RL runners placed in the top twenty at the meet, earning All-NEPSAC distinction. Those boys include:

    1st – Mark Henshon (III)
    4th – Will Cote (II)
    11th – Quinn Donovan (II)
    19th – George Madison (III)
    20th – Javi Werner (II)

    The Junior Varsity team also completed a strong season, offering lots of promise for the future of the program. The J.V. squad earned a third place finish in the ISL, placing three runners in the top 15:

    6th – Michael Thomas (IV)
    9th – John Harrington (I)
    14th – Liam O’Connor (I)

    The Junior team completed a perfect season, finishing with an undefeated record of 13-0, running many perfect races throughout the fall. They concluded their season by earning first place in the Junior Jamboree hosted on October 30 at Roxbury Latin.

    Erin Berg

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