Committed Change-Maker John Gabrieli ’12 Delivers Wyner Lecture

On April 11, Roxbury Latin welcomed alumnus John Gabrieli, Class of 2012, as the year’s Wyner Lecturer—a series featuring individuals committed to solving big problems for social good.

Until recently, John served as co-chair of the Every Voice Coalition—a grassroots movement to combat sexual violence on college campuses and support survivors—which he founded and which he now serves as board chair. Since 2016, the Every Voice Coalition has brought together students and survivors, community organizations, and universities to combat campus sexual violence by passing student and survivor-written legislation on the state-level. The organization is currently active in 12 states with five bills already passed into law.

“My work on Every Voice began when I was a college student myself, almost eight years ago now,” John began in Rousmaniere Hall. “Coming into college, I had seen the headlines, and I had read the statistics: According to the U.S. Department of Justice, one in ten college students will experience rape or sexual assault before graduation. It’s one thing to know the statistics on sexual assault, and it’s another thing to find out that it has happened to a friend, family member, or loved one.

“Most people I know who have been impacted by sexual violence have never reported. The few who did choose to report often faced drawn-out, sometimes years-long legal struggles that were often re-traumatizing but rarely resulted in any kind of justice. For me, there was a sense of powerlessness that came from seeing people I cared about being impacted, and not feeling like I could do anything about it… I knew that the vast majority of perpetrators would never be held to account, and that the cycle would continue to repeat itself, year after year. Because while you may have heard the statistics—1 in 5 women, and 1 in 16 men will be impacted by sexual assault on college campuses—what you might not know is that these rates have held largely constant now for almost 50 years, as far back as we have data. Widespread sexual violence had seemingly become the norm on our college campuses; as students, we weren’t willing to accept that.” He and seven other college students got together, in the basement of a friend’s home, and got to work.

“Widespread sexual violence had seemingly become the norm on our college campuses; as students, we weren’t willing to accept that.” He and seven other college students got together, in the basement of a friend’s home, and got to work.

“We didn’t have funding or official status, but we made a website and some flyers and gave ourselves a name. All of a sudden, we weren’t eight random college students, we were The Every Voice Coalition, and legislators started meeting with us and taking us seriously.”

A lifelong and devoted reader, with a fondness for history and languages, John was awarded deturs in English, French, and History during his senior year at RL. He was a National Merit Scholar and a member of the Cum Laude Society, and he stood out as a member of the Debate team, for which he served as president, earning international accolades, including a fourth place finish at the World Public Speaking Championship in Brisbane, Australia. He went on to graduate from Harvard, with a degree in economics, where he earned several prizes for his excellence in scholarship and his thesis.

“John’s academic record is stellar, but it’s not the most admirable part of his story,” Headmaster Brennan said in introducing John. “For four summers John put his painstaking scholarly skills to good use in a neuro-science lab at MIT, where, he says, ‘What I learned about the importance of hard work, self-control, and an open mind challenged my preconceptions about the central role that natural talent plays in determining outcomes, and this has permanently altered my beliefs about success.’ “John discovered at a young age that history—and its effects— can be deeply personal, and that the only forces with the potential to drive political change for good were human compassion, investment, and hard work. Already in his young career as an activist and civic-minded change-maker, John Gabrieli has walked the walk, leveraging his skills, and his gifts, and his humanity, seeking out solutions to problems that help individuals in need. John is the very embodiment of our persistent admonition that RL grads go on to lead and serve.”

Today, John is co-founder and managing director of Trio New College Network, an organization aimed at providing underserved students across the country access to an innovative, hybrid-college degree program that works for them. After teaching middle school through Teach for America, John went to work expanding access to college for non-traditional students as a research associate at Southern New Hampshire University’s Sandbox Innovation Center. There he became convinced that the hybrid college model had the potential to transform higher education. He is passionate about building an equitable higher education system that gives every student the opportunity to lead a choice-filled life.

During his remarks, John urged students to persist in the face of inevitable setbacks; not to rely on others to come up with solutions to the problems they see; and to remember that no one is too young to make a difference.

John continues a tradition of esteemed Wyner Lecturers who have been committed to societal change for good in various facets of life, and who have shed light on important social issues for Roxbury Latin’s boys. The series was established in 1985 by Jerry Wyner, Class of 1943, and his sister, Elizabeth Wyner Mark, as a living memorial to their father, Rudolph Wyner, Class of 1912. Past speakers in the lecture series include historian and author Doris Kearns Goodwin; “Schindler’s list” Holocaust survivor Rena Finder; Billy Shore, founder of Share Our Strength and the No Kid Hungry campaign; Mark Edwards, founder of Opportunity Nation; Dr. Iqbal Dhaliwal of MIT’s Jameel Poverty-Action Lab; alumnus Bo Menkiti ’95, who transforms underserved communities through real estate development; and, last year, Juan Enriquez, whose fascinating foray into imagining the future through an ethical lens was insightful and memorable. //

Smith Visiting Scholar, Dr. Brian Purnell

Interview by ERIN E. BERG

When Dr. Brian Purnell—professor of Africana Studies and History at Bowdoin College—joined the Roxbury Latin faculty this year as the Smith Visiting Scholar, he was not entirely new to the school. In February 2021, as recommended by alumnus Ahmed Abdelrahman ’18, Dr. Purnell delivered a powerful Hall (via Zoom) to students and faculty titled “The Fierce Urgency of Now,” focused on the history of racial injustice in America. Dr. Purnell’s research, teaching, and writing has focused in particular on race relations—as well as related laws and urban development—throughout the boroughs of New York City, though he has taught and written extensively about the place of racism in both the North and the South throughout our country’s history.

On campus this winter and spring, in addition to teaching the Class I history elective titled History of the Civil Rights Movement, Dr. Purnell delivered two Halls. The first, in January, was titled “Education of a Patriot,” in which he described his conflicted decision about military service—a path he’d always imagined for himself—and his ultimate determination that studying and teaching American history was a valuable way in which to embody and express his own strong patriotism. Dr. Purnell delivered his second Hall, titled “Dr. Purnell’s Guide to African American History,” in February, which focused on the history behind the celebration of Black History Month, and the issues that it aims to address: problems of omission, distortion, and elision.

Dr. Purnell immersed himself in the Roxbury Latin community this year, as he served as Smith Scholar, and here he talks about some of what was most meaningful, surprising, and resonant during that experience.

What was compelling to you, about teaching the history of civil rights to students here, at this particular moment? I’ve always wanted to teach high school students in an academic sense. I’ve taught this material to college students, and I was eager to see what would stick with younger students—what they would care about and be most interested in, what connections they would make, what they would grapple with, and how. I guess that’s a way of saying I wanted to see how this curriculum would land with a motivated, younger group of students.

And what did you find? Were there any units, events, or topics you discussed with the boys that they regarded as particularly powerful or important? Yes, two come to mind. The students wrestled in very serious ways, at a very high level of thinking, with the protest strategy of non-violence and the debates that African American activists had about self-defense. The Roxbury Latin students took all sides of that part of the course seriously. They wrestled with the questions about nonviolent tactics versus the need for self-defense, from the inside out. They looked at it with 360 degrees of complexity. I appreciated how some of the conversations would result in students arguing that armed self-defense made logical sense when citizens did not experience protection from law enforcement—police, or prosecutors, or courts. And that it proved an ineffective strategy for building a protest movement. That was the kind of analytical strength the class produced, and that’s just one example.

We also talked quite a bit about the significance of police and the role that police play in communities—the need that Black people in the United States have regarding equal protection of the law, through law enforcement, and the damage that tense relationships between Black communities and police departments can have on civic life. We talked a lot about that, and I appreciated how the students took the study seriously, from the history of the unit on the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. The students were able to understand why the Black Panthers considered policing the police such an important part of life in Oakland and in Chicago, and also how some of the Panthers’ tactics of romanticizing guns contributed to their ineffectiveness in long-term political monitoring of law enforcement.

Those two themes are related, and they covered different periods of the course, but they appeared several times over the fourteen weeks, and the students did a magnificent job of taking this topic seriously—as a historical issue and as a contemporary one.

What were some of the highlights for you in teaching this course this year? The students know each other very well here. The culture of the classroom was quite singular in my experience, because some of these students have been with each other since the seventh grade. They had a level of trust and understanding of each individual member of the class that made the teaching experience, for me, unique and enjoyable. It meant they were able to challenge each other respectfully and directly. They were able to both appreciate and, at times, express gentle reproach with each other’s eccentricities and personalities. Most important, they had a level of comfort and, I would say, trust. If a student expressed a contrarian point of view, it never sucked the oxygen out of the room. It was natural. It was real. I've never had a teaching experience like that. The students really had the freedom to be themselves, and I don’t think that’s common.

What growth did you see in the students—either individually or as a class—over this course? It seemed to me that all of the students became much more comfortable and confident talking about contentious issues. The challenge of a class like this is that it’s always blending the historical aspects of things—which, to a degree, can be safe, because it’s in the past—with what’s happening in our country and our world right now. People have different levels of comfort in making those

ROXBURY LATIN INTERNATIONAL SMITH FELLOWS

connections and talking about them in robust ways. Doing that well was not hard for these Roxbury Latin students. Each student became more comfortable and confident making those connections, debating those connections, and asserting their analyses about how issues of racial discrimination and inequality from the past connected to the present.

What do you hope the boys will take away from the course? My primary hope is that the students become lifelong enthusiasts for serious history. More specifically, I hope they come to understand how important the struggle for civil rights was in the past, how difficult it was, and not in the ways that we assume. People are often aware of the prejudice and violence that individuals faced, but I don’t think people have an understanding of just how long it took to bring about gains in civil rights. Moving the ball inches took generations. We talked about the strategy that resulted in the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954: On the short end, that was a 20-year process to bring that case to court and be successful. In the longer term, it was 50 years between the Plessy v. Ferguson decision and the Brown decision. The architect for Brown, Charles Hamilton Houston, died at 55 years old, never living to see the fruit of all of the work he did to make Brown happen. The struggle for civil rights in the United States is a generations-long history. People had—and continue to have—so much invested in it. It’s an important part of our country’s history that's exciting to learn about and, I hope, inspiring.

If you were to assign these students a Part II, or an extension of the course, what would you tell them to read, or study, or do? What would be next? I would encourage a couple of things. I would want them to pick something that they learned in the course, like a method—the legalism strategy, or community organizing, or the vote—and I would have them look into that method’s applications in the decades that followed the Civil Rights Movement. We finish the coursework in the late 1960s, and I would encourage students to take something that really interested them or motivated them and to study it in more detail in the years after the Civil Rights Movement and see how things changed over time.

A student might also be really excited about some particular person or event. For example, we studied a bit of economic development and learned about Whitney Young, whose whole approach to civil rights was to bring American industry and businesses into the Civil Rights Movement on many fronts—employment, marketing, products, equity in the workplace. That story might inspire and intrigue a student who’s an entrepreneur, or who’s interested in marketing. My hope is that they might say, “How did this intersection of business and civil rights continue to develop after Whitney Young, and where are we now in American commercialism, and business practices, and employment practices?”

Is there anything about the role of the Smith Scholar that you feel is important to share? Considering the long and impressive list of individuals who have served as Smith Scholar, it seems clear to me that the role’s mission has to do with connections between America and the broader world. There’s so much of that in the history of the Civil Rights Movement; it wasn't just a domestic history—it connected the United States, and the people of the United States, to people all around the world and to so many global issues. //

RL Places Third in Annual Graves Kelsey Tournament

On February 12, Roxbury Latin’s wrestlers headed to Thayer Academy to compete in this winter’s Graves Kelsey Tournament—the Independent School League wrestling championships, named for long-time and legendary coaches Bert Kelsey of Roxbury Latin, and Gibby Graves of Buckingham Browne & Nichols.

Earning a highly respectable third-place finish overall in a field of 13 teams, Roxbury Latin’s wrestlers exhibited dedication and toughness in a collective effort, with the following wrestlers placing in their respective weight classes:

1st place: Navid Hodjat (V) 2nd place: Benji Macharia (IV), Justin Lim (IV) 3rd place: Declan Bligh (V), Aydin Hodjat (III) 4th place: Dovany Estimphile (III), Justin Shaw (II), Nick Consigli (III) 5th place: Noah Abdur Rahim (IV), George Humphrey (I), Krystian Reese (II) 6th place: Alejandro Rincon (III)

Rounding out the RL team were tournament representatives Aidan Gibbons (II) and Thomas Savage (II). The Graves-Kelsey Tournament was named in honor of Gibby Graves and Bert Kelsey in 1966. Bert was Roxbury Latin’s wrestling coach from 1937 to 1966, earning 24 winning seasons and numerous individual championships. A teacher of English and debate, his energy and good nature endeared him to hundreds of students. Gibby Graves was a long-time coach at Buckingham Browne & Nichols and was a pioneer in developing the league tournament. Roxbury Latin has earned the title of Graves Kelsey Champion 20 times since 1966.

Twelve members of RL’s wrestling team went on to compete at the New England Championships, including Navid Hodjat, Benji Macharia, Noah Abdur Rahim, Declan Bligh, Dovany Estimphile, Justin Shaw, Justin Lim, Aydin Hodjat, Nick Consigli, George Humphrey, Krystian Reese, and Aidan Gibbons. The team finished sixth in New England out of 39 teams. Three of RL’s wrestlers—Navid Hodjat, Benji Macharia, and Justin Lim—qualified to complete at the National Tournament at Lehigh University.

Perhaps most impressive, the team also went on to earn the ISL Wrestling Sportsmanship Award, an honor they also received in 2019-2020. //

Dovany Estimphile (III)

Justin Lim (IV) Aydin Hodjat (III) Justin Shaw (II)

Varsity Track and Field — First Row: Jedidiah Nelson (Captain), Armando Walters (Captain), Rami Hayes-Messinger (Captain); Second Row: Ryan Miller, Bruno Kim, Robbie Sun-Friedman, Tommy Reichard, Mark Anderson; Third Row: Nick Frumkin, Bobby Zabin, Mathias Why, Michael Allen, Marc Quintanar, Matt O’Connor, Kayden Miller, David Sullivan, Ryan Lin, Dominic Landry, Jayden Phan, Dennis Jin; Fourth Row: Paul Wilkinson, Miles BaumalBardy, Brendan Reichard, Max Williams, Sunil Rosen, Carter Crowley, George Madison, Joseph Wang, Ryan Peterson, Erin Dromgoole (Head Coach); Fifth Row: Arturo Solís (Coach), Josh Krakauer, Alejandro Philippides, Josh Hua, Jacob Tjaden, Jose Flores, Dovany Estimphile, Chris Heaton (Coach); Sixth Row: John Austin, Alejandro Rincon, Devan Rajagopalan, Luke Wilkinson, Christo Velikin, Alex Nahirny, Emmanuel Nwodo, Zak Bashir, Colin Herbert, Austin Kee, Ezra Liebowitz, Tyler Duarte, Zach Heaton, Quinn Thomson; Seventh Row: Akhilsai Damera, Levi Harrison, Nahum Workalemahu, Michael Thomas, Adam Kuechler, Liam Finn, Rian Finn, Ehtan Dhadly, Jack Tompros, Matt Hoover, Thomas Savage, Kofi Fordjour, Taylor Fitzgerald (Coach). Missing: Eli Bailit, George Humphrey, Heshie Liebowitz, Andrew Sparks, Arjun Bose, Brandon Clark, Edgar Torres, Isaac Frehywot, Ezra Klauber, Benji Macharia, Aiden Theodore, Jamie Morris-Kliment (Coach), Bruce Lynch (Coach).

Spring Varsity Teams

Varsity Baseball — First Row: James Henshon, Antonio Morales, Aidan Brooks, Mark Henshon (Captain), James Birch, Oliver Wyner, Patrick Schultz, Justin Loo; Second Row: Dave Cataruzolo (Head Coach), Thomas Pender, Ryan Conneely, James Gibbons, Matt Golden, Will Matthews, Hunter Stevens, Sam Seaton, Caleb Meredith, Matt Taglieri, Bryce Ketchen, Shawn Heide (Coach). Missing: Harry Lonergan, Liam Grossman, Andy Chappell (Coach).

Varsity Tennis — Justin Yamaguchi (Manager), Tanner Oberg, Eric Zhu, Daniel Stepanyan, Cole Oberg, Tait Oberg (Captain), John Fazli (Captain), Eric Diop, Akshay Kumar, Jiho Lee, Frankie Gutierrez, Ousmane Diop (Head Coach).

Varsity Lacrosse — First Row: Mark McGuire, Brendan St. Peter, Jake Novak, Sean DiLallo, David Sullivan, Kieran McCabe, Robby O'Shaughnessy, Taylor Cotton, Henry Hochberg, Parker Collins; Second Row: Chris Brown (Coach), Brodie Lee (Manager), John Thomas, Michael Strojny, Reid Spence, Johnny Price, Zach Donovan, Hayden Cody, Jake Popeo, Nolan Walsh (Captain), Angus Leary, Riley Stanton (Captain), Drew Streckenbach, Chris Weitzel (Captain), Thomas Connolly, J.P. Buckley, Luke Devito, Will Silva, Vincent Jaeger, Dom Cuzzi, Will Anderson, Aidan Gibbons, Cam Carr (Manager), Matt Bastardi, Mike Higgins (Head Coach). Missing: Andrew Bingham (Manager).

All Together Now

On March 6, Winsor School hosted a joint choral concert with the Roxbury Latin Glee Club and the Latonics. The combined chorus performed Rutter’s “Gloria.” //

A Cappella Fest Returns!

On April 1, for the first time since 2019, Roxbury Latin hosted its annual A Cappella Fest in the Smith Theater. This year, RL welcomed Brandeis VoiceMale, featuring alumnus Richard Impert ’20, and Similar Jones, featuring Rob Opdycke and Nate Piper. The Latonics took the stage after intermission with a rousing pop set. //

A Retrospective

Winter Art Exhibit of the Work of Brian Buckley

On the evening of January 13, more than 200 members of the Roxbury Latin community—students, alumni, faculty, parents, and friends—helped to celebrate the opening of this year’s winter art exhibit, featuring the work of veteran faculty member and long-time Arts Department Chair Brian Buckley. Having served for 36 years on the Roxbury Latin faculty, Mr. Buckley is retiring. He has led the Arts Department for 33 years and has positively affected thousands of RL students over nearly four decades. In honor of his talent and dedication, and in celebration of his retirement, RL hosted Brian Buckley: A Retrospective—an exhibit of Mr. Buckley’s artwork from 1977 through 2021. //