California
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July 17, 2023
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Students walk past Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity Chapel

 

Having come to know both campus and each other on Sunday, students were thrilled to begin getting to know the College’s intellectual life on Monday, the first full day of the California High School Summer Program. 

Following breakfast, the group congregated once again in St. Cecilia Hall and heard from TAC tutor and program director Brian Dragoo. Mr. Dragoo described the College’s intellectual and pedagogical vision in greater detail. Unpacking the wisdom of the Great Books through the Discussion Method, he observed, cultivates a comprehensive mode of thinking which changes how students approach the world and themselves. He therefore advised students not to neglect their classes and spiritual lives amidst the program’s activities and social opportunities.

After orientation, program chaplain Rev. Sebastian Walshe, O. Praem. (’94), offered Mass in Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity Chapel. Then the students — excited and not a little nervous — made their way to the first class of the day. 

Photos: Monday Morning
  • Students enter the classroom building
  • Students in the Commons
  • Students in the auditorium
  • Brian Dragoo addresses the students
  • A student listens
  • Students applaud
  • Students in the Chapel pews
  • Students at Mass
  • Another view of the same
  • Another view of the same
  • Four walk on the quad path
  • Students on the Chapel steps
  • Two walk down the Chapel steps
  • Another two students walk down the Chapel steps

The reading under discussion was Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, a wrenching tragedy of challenging revelations, piety, and consequences. Students wondered whether Oedipus deserved his fate (if that is even the right word for it), or whether he was unwittingly responsible for his own misfortune. The conversations continued over a lunch of steak fajitas, after which students reconvened for their afternoon class. There, they wrestled with Plato’s dialogue Euthyphro, identifying resonances between Socrates’ ideas about the virtue of piety and Oedipus’s exemplification — or not — of the virtue in action.

Students immensely enjoyed their first discussions. Said one programmer of his classes, “They were slow at first, but really picked up.”

Post-Lunch Candids
  • Students walk along the academic quadrangle
  • Students walk along the academic quadrangle
  • Students walk along the academic quadrangle
  • Students walk along the academic quadrangle
  • Students walk along the academic quadrangle
  • Students walk along the academic quadrangle
  • Students walk along the academic quadrangle
  • Students walk along the academic quadrangle
  • Students walk along the academic quadrangle
  • Students walk along the academic quadrangle
  • Students walk along the academic quadrangle
  • Students walk along the academic quadrangle

After a day spent in serious discussion in “sections” of 15 to 17, the students are now getting to know their new section-mates through a bit of friendly competition at this afternoon’s Section Games. The evening will bring them to their first study hall, where they will prepare for tomorrow’s classes, as well as a campus Rosary and a few hours enjoying the St. Patrick Coffee Shop in St. Cecilia Hall.

Stop by the Summer Program Blog Tuesday morning to hear which section triumphed in the games!