Institut Le Rosey - History

History

Château du Rosey (depicted at left), a Feudal chateau located on Le Rosey's main campus at Rolle, dates to the Middle Ages and presently houses Le Rosey's central reception area. In 1880, the site of the Le Rosey campus was chosen by the school's founder, Paul-Emile Carnal, "a lover of nature, history and the countryside". The Le Rosey campus at Rolle is situated adjacent to the famous Lake Geneva. In 1911, the founder passed the ownership of Le Rosey to his son, Henri-Paul Carnal. In 1917, the school began to go to Gstaad in the German-speaking Canton of Berne for the winter months to escape the dense fog that settles in on Lake Geneva. In 1947, the third generation of directors, Louis Johannot and Helen Schaub, assumed ownership of Le Rosey. Under the same ownership, in 1967, Le Rosey admitted girls for the first time and opened a separate girls' campus. In 1980, the current owners, Philippe and Anne Gudin de la Sablonnière, became the fourth generation of Directors at Le Rosey. Louis Johannot, in an interview with Life Magazine in 1965, made a comment that received considerable attention: "The only reason I always try to meet and know the parents better is because it helps me to forgive their children."

Prior to the introduction of the 10% quota, wherein no more than 10% of the student body may come from one country, different nationalities made up the majority of students at Le Rosey. In the 1950s and 1960s, the majority of students were Americans, Italians, and Greeks, in the 1970s came the Arabs and Iranians, in the 1980s came the Japanese and Koreans, and in the 1990s came the Russians. The children of the Russian oligarchs, which made up 1/3 of the student body in the 1990s, began to "terrorize" the other students at Le Rosey, and at least one non-Russian family withdrew their son in consequence.