Traditions
The school has a number of traditions, such as a six-day week with classes on Saturdays.
In the center of the school campus is a large quadrangle used exclusively for commencement exercises on which students and faculty are not allowed to walk. This "Holy Lawn" is an unwritten school rule that has no confirmed story of origin. Its name likely derives from the lawn's location in front of the Abbey Church of St. Gregory the Great. In 2000, a student film series produced a clip of a student running across the lawn from the perspective of a monastery security camera. The Abbot made a cameo appearance in which he pushed a button that sent a bolt of lighting from the sky, electrocuting the student. The clip celebrated the tongue-in-cheek mythology of the lawn's tradition.
Another school tradition is one required year of Latin.
Read more about this topic: Portsmouth Abbey School
Famous quotes containing the word traditions:
“... the more we recruit from immigrants who bring no personal traditions with them, the more America is going to ignore the things of the spirit. No one whose consuming desire is either for food or for motor-cars is going to care about culture, or even know what it is.”
—Katharine Fullerton Gerould (1879–1944)
“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)