A WITNESS FOR LIFE IN SAN FRANCISCO
Students Lead the Way at Walk for Life

The annual Thomas Aquinas College pilgrimage to the Walk for Life West Coast got off to a slow start this year, when the buses that were supposed to help bring some 260 students to San Francisco were delayed for hours. Although scheduled to depart campus after the close of classes (4:00 p.m.) on Friday, January 20, three of the buses did not arrive until 7:00 p.m., and the fourth came at 6:00 a.m. the next morning!

Yet the students were undeterred. They remained upbeat and excited throughout, eager to lead Saturday’s procession through the city’s streets. Passengers on the first three buses arrived late in the night at San Francisco’s Saints Peter and Paul Church, where the Salesian fathers graciously offered them places to sleep for a few hours before the morning’s Walk. The others met them at the Walk, arriving with only minutes to spare.

At the request of the Walk’s organizers, the College’s students once again took on volunteer positions, directing traffic and crowds. Clad in their TAC sweatshirts, all prayed, sang, and peacefully called for an end to abortion alongside more than 50,000 fellow walkers. On Sunday morning, the students made the 375-mile trip back to campus, tired but grateful for the opportunity to bear witness to the Culture of Life.

Photo slideshow

FAITH IN ACTION
Highlights from the College’s Alumni Blog

• The website of the Library of Congress has published an interview with Daina Andries (’09), a metadata technician with the Digital Resources Division of the Law Library of Congress. In the interview Miss Andries discusses her work at the library — “capturing and reviewing metadata, or data about data, which renders a resource more searchable by supplying identification information about the resource” — as well as her academic background. “The curriculum at Thomas Aquinas was rigorous and interdisciplinary,” she says, and it provided her with a “foundation in logical reasoning and philosophy” that has proved invaluable in “learning about semantics and knowledge organization, object-oriented programming, and analytics.”

• In honor of St. John Bosco, whose feast the Church celebrated on January 31, Sean Fitzpatrick (’02) penned an article for Catholic Exchange in which he praised the saint’s judicious balance of lenience and stringency in ministering to the boys in his care. Don Bosco “brought joy to everything he did with his boys, from soccer to the Sacraments,” wrote Mr. Fitzpatrick, but he “was not tolerant when intolerance was called for, and this was a part of his genius.” As the headmaster of Gregory the Great Academy, an all-boys boarding high school in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Mr. Fitzpatrick knows well of what he writes. And, no doubt, relies heavily on the intercession of St. John Bosco in his duties.

• Writing for the Daily Signal, of which she is the managing editor, Katrina Trinko (’09) analyzes the deeper meaning behind Rep. Eric Swalwell’s recent disastrous performance on Fox News, in which he tried to avoid a simple question about abortion from host Tucker Carlson: “Do you think it is the taking of a human life?” Congressman Swalwell’s constant deflection, writes Miss Trinko, “really gets to the gist of the abortion debate, which is this: Is the unborn baby human or not, and if not human, at what point does she become human?” 

The Faith in Action blog  

professional advice
Office of Career Planning Hosts Talks on Banking, Nursing

As part of its ongoing series of career talks, the Office of Career Planning recently hosted two more events at which professionals shared advice and wisdom with the College's students.

• On February 5 Beverly Stevens, a former banker and the current editor of Regina Magazine, presented an overview of the financial industry and advice about how the College's students can best break into it. “You guys have an extremely strong education. You haven’t got an education-lite, like what takes place at so many other universities,” said Mrs. Stevens. “You’ve actually had to read first sources and think — and that, in and of itself, is a skill that is rare in the U.S.”

• Alumna Clare Hoonhout (’08), RN — an emergency department nurse for Scripps Health in San Diego, California — spoke on January 25 to a roomful of students eager for her expertise and counsel. “Your four years here at TAC serve as an excellent foundation for nursing for two key reasons,” she said. “First you are immersed in the intellectually rigorous life. Critical thinking? You do that every day. You know the importance of asking the right questions. Second is our Catholic faith. We recognize the dignity of human life and that every person is a child of God. It is with our faith that we are able to love and serve even the unlovable who come through our doors. We understand that suffering is not pointless, and that death is not the end.”