Traditions
Choate Rosemary Hall is rich in traditional events:
- Matriculation Ceremony at the start of school, in which each student signs a pledge card of commitment "to personal growth, to integrity, to self-discipline, and to caring for others."
- Cake Race is held on the last day of fall classes. Students and staff throng the cross country course for a 5K race, with winners in each form awarded a cake.
- Festival of Lessons and Carols is based on a service held in King's College Chapel, Cambridge. The yuletide candlelight event in Seymour St. John Chapel includes Bible readings, music by Choate choruses, and instrumental groups, and carol-singing by the congregation.
- Physics Phlotilla takes place in spring term. Students gather on the banks of the Science Center Pond to watch a competition among makeshift cardboard boats. The principles of buoyancy are tested, and many craft are sunk. Students must sail their boats the length of the pond and there are prizes for speed and creative design. There is also a sub-category for best suit of armour constructed from cardboard.
- First Hurrah is the final social event for the juniors hosted by the seniors. It marks 100 more days till the end of school.
- Last Hurrah is the final social event for seniors, known (in British-influenced terminology) as sixth formers. Traditionally sixth formers enjoy a reception, dinner, ballroom dance, and swing dance competition.
- Incendium is held in early April after sixth formers have received their college application decisions. Rejection letters are tossed into fire pits on the Class of 2008 Patio, and pinatas blazoned with the names of colleges are cathartically destroyed.
- Garden Party, a Rosemary Hall tradition, takes place in spring term. Sixth form girls invite a fifth form (junior class) girl and a faculty member. They exchange flowers, take pictures, and pass on Rosemarian traditions to the rising senior girls. A slideshow is then presented. In response to Garden Party, Choate boys have created a "Parden Garty" and are now included in the slideshow portion of the event.
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Famous quotes containing the word traditions:
“But generally speaking philistinism presupposes a certain advanced state of civilization where throughout the ages certain traditions have accumulated in a heap and have started to stink.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“Napoleon never wished to be justified. He killed his enemy according to Corsican traditions [le droit corse] and if he sometimes regretted his mistake, he never understood that it had been a crime.”
—Guillaume-Prosper, Baron De Barante (1782–1866)
“I think a Person who is thus terrifyed [sic] with the Imagination of Ghosts and Spectres much more reasonable, than one who contrary to the Reports of all Historians sacred and profane, ancient and modern, and to the Traditions of all Nations, thinks the Appearance of Spirits fabulous and groundless.”
—Joseph Addison (1672–1719)