Mu Tau Mu of Alpha Chi Omega

News from the collegians at Zeta Upsilon chapter of Alpha Chi Omega. Please comment below or email us axozu25 at gmail if you can help. Thank you!

We are very excited and think this year's Domestic Violence Awareness Week is going to be really successful!! Here is the schedule of events for this year:

Monday, October 25: Self-Defense Class
Tuesday, October 26: Purple Day!
Wednesday, October 27: Hidden Voices/Luminaries
Friday, October 29: Kickball Tournament

As you know, we are always so honored and excited as well as extremely grateful to have the help of our alumnae. I wanted to give you a little bit of information that you could pass on to the rest of MTM.

We will, of course, be having our bake sale this year, from which all of the donations go straight to the DVC of Cleveland. We would LOVE any donations that alums would like to give in the Baked Goods area. We will be baking a lot ourselves, and will hopefully be getting donations of baked goods from elsewhere, but we couldn't do it without your help!!

Also, we are looking to create more interest in giving donations by having amazing prizes for our Kickball tournament this year and for our Raffle. On this note, I was wondering if you could ask around to see if any of the members of MTM are involved in large corporations where they might be able to get donated gift cards/food/money/etc. for our cause. Connections like that are always really helpful!

Lastly, we LOVE to have our alums at our events. If you would be interested, we would love to get alumnae involved in our Kickball Tournament. It is $50 to register a team of no more than 10. Again, all of the money we make goes straight to the Domestic Violence Center of Cleveland. It is always so exciting to have you guys come to our events! I hope you consider getting a team or a few teams together! If anyone is interested in registering a team, they can e-mail me at ejk35 at case dot edu.

Thank you!!

On Tuesday, October 19th, the Domestic Violence Center of Cleveland hosts their 17th Annual Break the Silence Luncheon from 11:30am - 1:30pm at Windows on the River. 

Mu Tau Mu is proud and very excited to be able to sponsor two Alpha Chi Omega collegians to attend the event! Get your tickets here!

Melissa Moore, author of Shattered Silence: The Untold Story of a Serial Killer's Daughter is the luncheon speaker. 

From the event flyer: "Melissa G. Moore, the daughter of Keith Hunter Jesperson, a man infamously known as the Happy Face serial killer, shares her personal experiences of surviving domestic violence abuse and how she escaped the perpetual cycle of violence. As seen on Oprah and Good Morning America, Melissa provides strength and hope, encouraging women who blame themselves to retain their belief in their self worth and life purpose when facing adversity."

From amazon.com: "Throughout her life, Melissa Jesperson Moore had to hide her true identity. She had pretended that life was perfect after her parents divorced and she was suddenly uprooted from everything familiar and loving. She had to be silent, and to pretend not to be disturbed or upset by her father's actions. Those experiences prepared Melissa to hide the deepest, darkest secret of all. As she began making different choices, building a successful and loving life on her own, her heart began to fill with rays of hope, though she could never quite rid herself of the dark shadow of secrecy and shame. Then one day, her beautiful, innocent daughter looked into her eyes and said, "Mommy, everybody's got a daddy. Where's your daddy?" Shattered Silence is an astonishing, true narrative of personal and spiritual transformation. From her secret life as "the daughter of The Happy Face Serial Murderer" to a woman that bared her soul and inspired millions, Melissa leads the reader on the vulnerable, compelling, and sometimes very raw journey of what it took to shatter the silence, and claim her own life."

 See all the events DVC has planned for Domestic Violence Awareness Month here, and follow DVC on Twitter @DVCCleveland. Follow the author Melissa Moore on Twitter as well @missybeans.

This post comes to us from Erin, the VP-Fraternity Relations at Zeta Upsilon chapter of Alpha Chi Omega. I hope you’ll take a minute to make a purchase – love that we can support the collegians and domestic violence awareness at the same time! 

Spa Night at AXO-ZU

Hello Alumnae and Friends of Alpha Chi Omega
 
Zeta Upsilon has a fun Mary Kay fundraiser going on now through August 31.  Linn Keyes Walker, a friend of Maura (ZU '87), came to the chapter house on Saturday (8/21) and did makeovers for 20 undergraduates.  She is generously donating 25% of all sales back to the chapter to use for our Fall Date Party.  She left books for those who couldn't make it and has opened up online sales to alumnae and friends of the chapter.  
 
Linn has been a Mary Kay consultant for 27 years and is currently an Independent Senior Director with Mary Kay.  She wanted to remind everyone that Mary Kay is currently selling 3 Lipsticks that will also result in $1 of each sale going towards the Mary Kay Ash foundation which supports victims of domestic violence, a cause Alpha Chi Omega supports, as we all know.  The colors can be seen at her website but the names are Confidence, Compassion and Inspiration (click to go directly to each lipstick).
 
So come shop online with Linn at www.marykay.com/linnkeyeswalker.com  Buy a new lipstick, foundation, or moisturizer, and support Zeta Upsilon while looking beautiful.

All orders through August 31 will result in 25% being returned to the chapter.  All you have to do is mention Alpha Chi Omega in the comments box in part 3 of the checkout process.  All of Linn's information is below in case you prefer to contact her directly.
 
'Imagine Your Way to Beautiful'
Linn Keyes-Walker
Ind. Sr. Sales Director - Mary Kay Cosmetics
linnkeyeswalker@marykay.com
440-285-8117 / 1-800-597-2915
 
Shop With Me Online 24 / 7 at my website:
www.marykay.com/linnkeyeswalker

Fall semester at CWRU begins this coming Monday, August 23rd. The Alpha Chi Omega collegians at Zeta Upsilon chapter will kick out the new year with a Sisterhood Retreat on Sunday, August 22nd, and we are proud to provide lunch for that event! Thank you, Maura ZU '87, for organizing the details for the lunch! 

To wish the chapter a successful/fun/happy semester, send a note to the house at 11421 Bellflower Rd, Cleveland, OH 44106. 

2010-11 is the Year of Water at Case Western Reserve University. Read more about the year long exploration of water at http://www.case.edu/events/convocation/

The start of the new academic year also marks the beginning of a new year for us. Can you believe we are starting our 7th year as an alumnae chapter? We had our first Exec Board meeting of the new year last Sunday and set some great goals for the next 3-5 years. We look forward to sharing more as our preliminary plans come together, and of course, all members are welcome at our Exec meetings, which tentatively will be held on the second Sunday evening of the month at 9pm EST this year. 

With a heartfelt thank you to everyone who participated in our social media experiment, this award is for you (especially our CWRU AXO sisters @ElyseM @amy_z and @flowerstrewn who did not miss a single week in the 6 months of the project!). [We look forward to thanking all Twitter participants in a follow up post next week - thank you #CharityTuesday tweeters!]

From our application: 

In May 2009, we launched a 26-week long pilot project with the following goals:

-          to promote domestic violence awareness in real time;

-          to educate Alpha Chi Omegas and the general public about issues related to DVA and other causes important to Alpha Chi Omega and Alpha Chi Omega Foundation;

-          to give our members who are active in social media an opportunity to “live our Alpha Chi Omega values” in a very real and timely way.

-          to illustrate how involved Alpha Chi Omega is in real-life issues and to break down stereotypes about sorority women.

We recruited sisters active on Twitter to join a facebook group so we could email weekly announcements, which were then cross-posted to our MTM blog and the facebook group discussion page. As the group grew, so did participation. We also took the logical step of including instructions for everyone to participate on Facebook and their personal blogs in addition to (or instead of on) Twitter.

Charity Tuesday started out strong on May 12 on Twitter with 28 participants. That first “message” (thanking Alpha Chi Omega Foundation for their work to end domestic violence) reached an audience of 10,189.

Over the weeks, we promoted our domestic violence awareness partners (like the Give Respect! Campaign), applauded our collegiate chapters, celebrated the first White House Advisor on Violence Against Women, and mourned the passing of long-time DVA advocate Farrah Fawcett. We made a lot of friends on Twitter – women and men whose work to end domestic violence humbles us all. And we learned some lessons.

One lesson came out of our most popular week. By popular, we mean we reached the largest audience. We shared a short film called Cut, starring Keira Knightley (Pirates of the Caribbean, Atonement) directed by Joe Wright (Atonement, The Soloist). In the UK it was labeled too violent for television. We asked people to watch the video and vote in a poll. That week the video was viewed 4,848 times. Our poll had 100 voters: 7 thought the film was too shocking; 92 did not. The lesson we learned was that the more interactive our weekly project, the better! We had a stack of comments on the poll as well, so adding that was a good experiment.

One of our other successes of the pilot project was the member drive we hosted for the Foundation Cause on facebook. It led to Alpha Chi Omega Foundation having the second most members among all the other NPC Foundation groups on facebook Causes! We also encouraged donations and are happy to report Alpha Chi Omega is #1 in this category!