TIMARU BOYS’ HS GRADUATES FIND TRADITION AND FUTURE AT OTAGO UNIVERSITY

Have two Timaru Boys’ High School grads gone from best friends to bitter rivals?

You bet – but only in the best traditions of Knox and Selwyn Colleges, two Otago University residences with a long history of friendly rivalry.

Tom Elliotte (left) and Dave McKenzie, both winners of a $5000 Leaders of Tomorrow Scholarship, are clearly enjoying every minute of it.

“Selwyn are really close-knit – we have really good fun,” declares Tom, the former Deputy Head Boy. “Orientation week was such an amazing week. After just two days there were people who you’d felt you’d known all your life.”

Tom, whose father went to Selwyn before him, is proud to be part of a long tradition. He names the fabled all-male Selwyn Ballet (which he’s in), the Leith Run, the College’s Haka group, and inter-college sporting and cultural competitions against Knox and Christchurch’s College House. “I feel privileged to at the oldest college of residence at the oldest University in the country.”

Dave, a staunch Knox man, like his grandfather, father and sister, has a similar story to tell. Even the old buildings, he says, “make you feel like you’re part of a tradition.” But it’s not all games; Knox, he adds, has a strong academic tradition as well.

“There are as many second-year students here as first-years, and you feel like you’re welcome – everyone helps you. It’s a very good environment to be around when you’re trying to do well.”

A former Head Boy, soccer captain and brass band member while at Timaru Boys’, Dave is now happily studying Law, History and Politics with a French paper thrown in for good measure.

Dave’s impressed that one of his case law lecturers is none other than the Dean of the School, Professor Mark Henaghan, a noted authority on Family Law and the emerging field of Human Genome Law.

History and Politics have proved fascinating as well, with courses on the Silk Road trade route, the 20th Century, and the Cold War, including Soviet propaganda: “I think it’s very important to know that these things went on.”

Tom, meanwhile, is also pursuing Law but with a double major in Commerce. And like Dave, he, too, is taking a language: German.