Community and Culture at Roxbury Latin
Supporting an Equitable, Diverse, and Inclusive School Experience for All
Roxbury Latin is a democratically gathered community, a school where individuals from a great diversity of backgrounds are brought together by shared goals and common ideals. Character formation, at the heart of who we are and what we do, means we aim to educate boys not just for their own intellectual gains, but so they might understand their responsibility to contribute meaningfully and positively to the whole, and, ultimately, to society. The ongoing concern for fairness, for justice, for how we can positively affect various communities are traits the faculty of Roxbury Latin aim not only to teach, but also to model and insist upon for all students. We also work to help boys discover the joy of knowing and understanding others whose circumstances, beliefs, and interests are unlike their own.
As advisors—guided by our primary promise to know and love each boy—we aim to be effective in understanding and advocating for every single boy, mindful always of what his unique attributes, gifts, and challenges might be. In everything we do, we aim to balance the best of Roxbury Latin—the best of our traditions, our relationships, and our history as an old, Classical school—with an eye toward positive growth, and with deep awareness of who we are, where we have been, and what we aim to be.
We aim to ensure that Roxbury Latin is a welcoming, inclusive, supportive place for every student to learn and grow. Every space at Roxbury Latin should be, and must be, a safe space for all. One part of our work is to ensure that such is the case. The other part of our work entails engaging with students to generate opportunities for discussion, some of which are general and inclusive, others that are tailored to more specific identity groups. These conversations aim to be ones in which students feel safe sharing, but also opportunities for listening, connecting, reflecting, and learning.
Serving the needs of the boys in our care requires ongoing consideration, conversation, and effort. We value the variety of perspectives individuals bring to the school and require that students and adults respect one another’s backgrounds and experiences, as well as have opportunities to discuss, disagree, ask questions, and aim to understand, especially when it comes to issues of race, identity, or topics of social justice. In the same way that we encourage our students to persist through difficult but worthy undertakings, we aim to model that commitment and persistence.
Roxbury Latin strives to develop a collection of disparate, distinctive, and independent individuals into a cohesive, collaborative “band of brothers” unified by a common mission and a shared dedication to excellence, while also enriched, deepened, and enhanced by diversity of experience, background, and outlook.
For more than 20 years, Roxbury Latin has maintained a need-blind admission and enrollment policy through which students are admitted and enrolled without regard to their families’ ability to pay. True to Roxbury Latin’s roots, boys are enrolled on merit. This commitment allows us to attract a hardworking and able student body drawn from dissimilar social, economic, racial, ethnic, and religious backgrounds. We ensure that every student has equal access to the full range of Roxbury Latin offerings—which includes all athletic and extracurricular programs, all off-campus and travel opportunities, access to test prep and psychological services. We insist that our boys—as well as our faculty and staff—commit to the generalist model, pursuing involvement and investment in many activities and offerings, and we seek out boys with vibrant personalities and passionate interests who have a capacity for deep and broad involvement. It is, therefore, natural that boys try out and try on various roles, discovering talents and passions and cultivating leadership skills, as well as collaboration. At Roxbury Latin, one is expected to try, and is supported should he fail. Implicit in our goals for these many years has been a deep commitment to diversity.
Roxbury Latin is a small, independent day school for boys in Grades 7 through 12, located on 117 acres in West Roxbury. In designing a vital program, Roxbury Latin is alert to what is best and most effective in educating boys, but we also dare to define what is in their best interest. We are committed to the character development and rigorous academic training of each boy entrusted to us, and we promise to know and love each boy. We care, most of all, what kind of person a boy is.
Learn more, and join us, at www.roxburylatin.org.
