aidancook – A Student Publication of the Roxbury Latin School

Rumors abound, but the origin of the coronavirus is uncertain

By Ethan Phan II

November 17th was a gray, foggy day in Wuhan, China. The past couple weeks had boasted subtle winds, warm weather, and clear skies, and this particular Sunday marked the beginning of gloomier forecasts in the region. But no one could have predicted just how gloomy things were about to become.

School-wide poll reveals students’ reactions to the pandemic

By Tripod Staff

Each issue this year, Tripod has conducted a poll of the student population asking a combination of serious and funny questions. This issue we focused many of the questions on how students are feeling about the unfortunate situation we are all in. We received responses from one hundred and six students from all ages. We hope that the information and responses provided here will provide some insight into how we are all doing and as always, some humor too! Notes from the Tripod editors are in italics. Thanks to everyone who responded! At the bottom of the article, you can see the winners of our two prizes.

The pandemic is affecting all schools similarly, but their responses are different

By Chris Zhu I

As the COVID-19 pandemic has caused a global shutdown and sent everyone into quarantine, schools around the world have been focused on resuming normal activities online. In this unprecedented time, institutions have embraced the use of online media to connect students and teachers and digital teaching platforms on a scale never seen before. Just like embracing the many other parts of current quarantine life, adjusting to an entirely online system hasn’t been an easy process and has required frequent adjustment. RL students have experienced this themselves – after a somewhat unpleasant first few days of long online school days, the school thankfully responded to students’ feedback and consequently adapted to fewer online classes and a longer lunch break. In the spirit of recreating the school environment remotely, RL has also run occasional online Halls and homerooms to simulate community gatherings. While our community has made significant progress with successful remote learning, it is interesting to see how other schools have responded to the crisis. I polled a few friends from ISL schools and some other nearby schools to see what their experiences were with the new online system.

Yard signs celebrate seniors

By Christian Landry I

All around Massachusetts, high schools have been providing yard signs for graduating seniors to indicate that they are a member of the class of 2020. With the help of parents of Class I, RL has done the same. On May 9, several parents of the class of 2020 traveled to houses of RL seniors to drop off RL yard signs.

Roxbury Latin By-the-Numbers + They Didn’t Say It + They Said It

10 – Combined AP scores of all 10 Calculus AB students

0 – Number of assignments cheated on during the online semester

NCAA Basketball ends amid pandemic fears

By Jamie Drachman IV

March 12th, 2020. That was the day when the collegiate and professional sports’ worlds shut down. The night before, Rudy Gobert, a Center on the Utah Jazz, tested positive for Covid-19 and the NBA subsequently suspended play from that night onwards. The following day, everything unraveled. Some NCAA conferences began their tournaments without fans, playing to empty arenas, but were shut down at the halftime of the first games. In many conferences, with no tournament played, no champion could be crowned, despite everything that had happened already in the season. Then on March 12, the NCAA dropped the hammer and cancelled all winter championships and spring seasons, leaving us fans with one thought: What a ride that would have been.

Staying in shape during quarantine

By Ben Crawford II

Without access to gyms, working out during quarantine can be complicated. To find out what RL student athletes are doing to stay in shape, I interviewed three Class II students – Frankie Lonergan, Will Specht, and Rohil Dhaliwal. Here’s what they had to say.

We will feel the effects of this pandemic for the rest of our lives

By Eric Zhu V

When the whole COVID-19 ordeal started, I didn’t take it seriously, despite being Chinese-American and hearing about the crisis from my relatives in China early on. When the entire city of Wuhan was quarantined, I realized that the coronavirus wasn’t any simple flu variant.

U.S. Armed Forces face a different kind of challenge: the battle to stay healthy

By Daniel Berk II

As the outbreak of COVID-19 worsens and we are forced to observe social distancing and quarantine for much longer than we would like, both a pressing and polarized issue has arisen: whether the American public should go outside and brave the virus or play it safe indoors. However, it is not just the American public that faces this issue. The armed forces must deal with the same quandary but with much more impactful consequences.

Author: aidancook

Inside This Issue: Quick Links

COVID-19 has changed the world as we knew it