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In the first of Friday’s two classes, the Summer Program students looked at Pascal’s “wager” over the existence of God. Then, in the second session, using St. Thomas’s fifth way, they looked at a proof for God’s existence which relies on seeing that natural bodies act for an end. In support of part of St. Thomas’s argument, students also read Jean Henri Fabre’s detailed descriptions of the grey cricket. Together these readings, contrary to the claims of Pascal, provide evidence for the existence of God.

At the end of Thursday’s classes, students filled the campus coffee shop to capacity for a lecture by College tutor Dr. John Nieto, “On Art and Beauty.” Dr. Nieto supplemented his remarks with a PowerPoint slideshow depicting many famous sculptures and paintings, several of which are at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, which the group will visit on Sunday

What is faith?

There were no afternoon classes on Wednesday, so students and prefects used the time for a program-wide volleyball tournament. There were 10 teams in all, each with six to eight players of varying skill and experience levels. It was a double-elimination tourney, and the winning squad then moved on to challenge a team of the College’s tutors plus one “ringer” — Summer Program Chaplain Rev. Sebastian Walshe, O.Praem. (’94). It was hard-fought, best-of-three match, but the tutors eked out a close win in the first game, and then pulled away for a decisive victory in the second.

Soon after the conclusion of afternoon sports yesterday, the high school students found their way over to St. Joseph Commons for dinner, where they debated the extent of Oedipus’s culpability for his tragic fate. Study hall followed, and was “very quiet,” according to the prefects — save for the dramatic reading of Sophocles’ Antigone led by prefect Chris Sebastian (’13).

The first day of the 2014 High School Summer Program began with breakfast in St. Joseph Commons, followed by a student orientation session in the library. There, the director of the summer program, Dr. Christopher A. Decaen, introduced the students to the program’s tutors — all members of the Thomas Aquinas College teaching faculty. The group then posed for a photo by the Guadalupe Fountain before heading across the quadrangle for a morning Mass in Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity Chapel.

The 136 students and 20 prefects for the 2014 High School Summer Program have arrived! Nearly all of the students — who hail from across the United States, as well as Italy, Argentina, Canada, the United Kingdom, Singapore, and Mexico — made it to campus by late Sunday, with the last arrival coming in this morning. Last night the students, their families and members of the teaching faculty enjoyed a tri-tip and chicken barbeque, followed by volleyball on the campus’s sand courts:

Next was an orientation session in St. Bernardine of Siena Library: