Communication Office

A noted educator, speaker and facilitator on issues of diversity and equity, Rodney Glasgow is on campus this week working with students, faculty, staff and administrators on issues of race and identity. Milton’s administration engaged Mr. Glasgow in response to events this week, in which many Upper School students demonstrated through peaceful sit-ins—a result of rising tensions and incidents of what students viewed as insufficient disciplinary response.

In this morning’s assembly, Mr. Glasgow addressed the entire Upper School, beginning with personal stories illustrating the strength and power of racial epithets—both as someone who bullied at one school and was bullied at another. He spoke about owning one’s own actions; the power of forgiveness; and understanding one another. He then invited students to share their personal experiences from the week—some who had participated in the sit-in and some who had not.

“The privilege of being in this community is that you can make the community what you want it to be,” said Mr. Glasgow.

A spring tradition, students and faculty gathered over tea for the Bisbee Prize presentations on Thursday afternoon. The 11 winners, selected by their teachers for outstanding research on their U.S. History papers, gave brief introductions to their work and answered questions from faculty and their peers. Topics ranged from the Native American occupation of Alcatraz in 1969 to the eugenics movement in America in the early 20th century.

Sophie Clivio (II) researched the failure of Civil Rights movement leaders to address sexual assault or rape of women of color. “What I found most interesting is that within the Black Panther movement, very important and powerful black male leaders were assaulting black women who were the heart and soul of the movement. Their treatment was similar to how female slaves were treated, and it wasn’t until the feminist movement in the 1970s that sexual assault against black women was finally given attention.”

George Wilde (I) looked at how processed food products became an accepted part of daily American diet, leading to today’s high obesity rates. “The part of my research that was the most sobering was the mindset of people who worked in the food industry. They were basically bribing the U.S. government with cash and other favors. I learned money gets what it wants and that was pretty freaky to me.”

This spring, four students represented Milton for the first time in the National Economics Challenge, after winning their division in the statewide competition.

Class II students Jaime Moore-Carrillo, Dhruv Jain, Quincy Hughes and Jeffrey Cao were invited to the Massachusetts statehouse on May 15 to be recognized as state champions. The first Milton students to compete in the challenge, they also placed 16th out of 35 teams in the semi-finals of the David Ricardo Division in the national challenge. Their entry, held online in April, was the result of their independent research into forming a student economics club at Milton.

An acclaimed artist and filmmaker, Tze Chun began making movies as a Milton student. He went on to major in film studies at Columbia University. Tze’s debut feature film, Children of Invention, premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival and went on to be one of the most-awarded and best-reviewed films of the year. It won 17 film festival awards, including eight Grand Jury or Best Narrative Feature prizes. Children of Invention was based on Tze’s short film Windowbreaker, which was selected for the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, and for which Tze was named one of Filmmaker Magazine‘s “25 New Faces of Independent Film.”