Trivial-Quadrivial Pursuits 2011

A beloved campus tradition, Trivial and Quadrivial Pursuit is the campus-wide quiz show — played on the Feast of St. Thomas Aquinas — famous for its extravagant costumes and over-the-top displays of creative gamesmanship. See a slideshow from this year's event on the right.

Every year there are three teams, each comprised of one-third of the student body, and each named for a subject of the trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric). The teams each select their own theme. This year, the Rhetoricians chose Star Wars.
The Logicians opted for the House of Medici as their theme.
And the Grammarians picked The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Questions for the game are all drawn for the College’s classical curriculum. The Grammarians, debate a response …
… and celebrate a correct answer.
Student referees manage the game.
Team captains get to make the case for the veracity of their responses to a panel of faculty judges.
Team members present judges with hors d’oeuvres and other enticements so as to elicit a favorable response …
… but it seldom works.
After a long contest, the Logicians emerge triumphant!

“There is truth, and we are seeking it — so much so that we leave out the opinions of textbook editors, and go back to original sources.”

– Andrea Florez (’14)

Auburn, Calif.

“Thomas Aquinas College knows this — that the life of the mind involves the spiritual life as well — and that is why I have always thought of this institution as a college in the image and likeness of John Paul II.”

– George Weigel

Papal Biographer