From there, students delighted over brunch in St. Joseph Commons …
… before making their way over to St. Cecilia Hall’s Fritz B. Burns Auditorium for the day’s lecture, “Recovering the Substance of Eucharistic Doctrine: Metaphysics, Logic, and the Conceptual Framework of Transubstantiation,” by Dr. Joshua Hochschild, professor and director of the Philosophy, Politics & Economics Program at Mount St. Mary’s University. “I am really overjoyed to be here today; I have admired Thomas Aquinas College from afar a long time,” he said. “I have known graduates and tutors, and to be able to visit here to give an address on the 750th anniversary of St. Thomas’s death is an incredible honor.”
That evening, after an All-College Dinner in St. Joseph Commons, the day’s celebration turned to fun. The student body broke into three teams to compete in a Great Books-based game called “Trivial-Quadrivial Pursuits.” Some 10 generous members of the teaching faculty served as the game’s judges. The teams chose themes and dressed in costumes to up the ante, entering the game with skits: The Logicians were the Spanish Inquisition, led by Ernie Grimm (’24); the Grammarians were 90s culture, led by Nate Whittaker (’24); and the Rhetoricians came as characters from Toy Story, led by Maria Brittain (’24). Teams competed for bragging rights and an after-party in the Dumb Ox Café.
The game was intense: Team captains bantered with each other, tried to entice the judges with delectable meals, and fought to win points — either by answering the questions correctly or using sophistry to defend wrong answers. All the while, they challenged each other to sabotage their rivals. The Grammarians led the way for a while, holding a strong lead, only for the Logicians to storm in with a glorious comeback, winning the game after surging ahead in points. Everyone left in high spirits, congratulating each other all the while.
