The fourth annual Summathon on Friday, Jan. 28 lasted for nine hours, but was well worth the time, according to the participants.

Greg Beabout, Associate Professor of Philosophy and the founder of the event called the reading a great success.

The casual setting in the first floor conference room of the Humanities Building attracted students and faculty to read a passage from Summa Theologica by St. Thomas Aquinas.

Below the speaker’s voice a low hum of conversation filled the air. At the end of each passage, the speaker was usually rewarded with applause from the crowd.

The articles on justice, virtue and reason, were read in French, English, Spanish and Latin.

“More people read in more different languages than in years past. For a while, it was four out of five readers in Latin,” Beabout said.

After four years, the first book from Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica was finally completed at 9:13 a.m. However, the festivities continued with the start of the second book.

Unlike the previous three years, the Philosophy Club was successful in convincing University President Lawrence Biondi, S.J. to participate. Cab Gutting and Sara Meyer, both members of the Philosophy Club, actually ran after Biondi’s golf cart on his way home and asked him to participate in the event.

“It was great. I was quite impressed,” said Gutting, a SLU freshman.

At 3:30 p.m., Biondi read a passage of St. Thomas concerning the