Yesterday was fantastic! We started off the day with a PCC Northwest regional meeting and then wrapped up the voting/business section of Convention. If you read about the unresolved discussion we posted yesterday regarding electronic voting, we motioned to postpone it until next Convention, because in-person voting works fine now and is not a necessity.
After we had lunch, we celebrated the 125th anniversary of AXO with a really great slideshow and montage of the past 12 decades! They even played real footage of our 7 founders voices describing their experiences in AXO, and how our traditions came to be. We then pinned 50 and 60 year members. They were initiated around the 1940s and 1950s, how crazy!
After the ceremony we changed into casual clothes and hopped on the tour bus for our DC Monuments excursion! We saw: the capital building, the Jefferson memorial, the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington monument, the World War II memorial, the White House, the Pentagon, and the Vietnam & Korea war memorials. Unfortunately we didn't get to see them too in depth because of the time restraint, but we did get to walk the premises and take pictures. We also had a tour guide who gave us the low down of each monument in about 10 minutes!
Once again, we came back to the room at about 9:30 and were ready to crash. Today was an educational day; we're going to attend several different speaker sessions of our choice and then it's the Final night banquet! (according to Jenni, we get lots of freebies on this night... we'll see!)
Hope you're all doing well and enjoying the blog! Write to us! Pretend that you like us!
-Mallory
Hellooooo sistas!
Since Mallory already gave you the low down of our day, I'll just give you a brief look at my perspective since I'm registered as a collegian here and not as the chapter's voting delegate. It's been very interesting to me to see how all of the voting has been handled, since I always sit in the back with Jenni and others and am able to quietly talk about each sides of the issue. It's so surreal to sit in a chapter meeting with so many sisters from all over and still see so many similarities! We really are one huge Alpha Chi, and doing closing ceremony with all of us was really amazing!
I have a less strict schedule for that is required for me to attend, but I've still been going to everything to get the full experience. We ended our chapter meeting earlier than planned today which allowed me to get in contact with Jessica Kelly. She is in charge of operations and finances for headquarters, and we met up later to discuss my kind of CR stuff and how we're dealing with things our chapter is facing. I'm SO glad I got the chance to talk to her because it made me feel a lot more confident with the way things are going :) We're making a lot of progress and we should all be proud! We've also sat through a lot of awards within the last few days, and let me tell you, we could hands down win a TON of them in the near future! I'm really excited to see how we do in the next few years since Mallory and I now know how we really need to approach the Awards Handbook.
My favorite part of today was the Celebrating 125 year’s ceremony. As Mal mentioned, we actually got to hear our founders! They also told us that its planned to be put on the national website soon so that we all can hear it. It's definitely something to check out, despite some of the fuzziness. The recordings were found on SUPER old steel records and thankfully were able to be recovered. It's actually really funny and interesting to hear things about our foundation. Like the fact that originally they wanted our colors to be scarlet red and gold green, but they couldn't find the right green ribbon to use, so they went with olive. Such trivial things to them that now are our legacy. They also basically picked our letters from random by eliminating all other green letters previously being used for chapters. After doing so and realizing that we were the first fraternity based on music they chose "Alpha". Then for the heck of it they picked "Omega", cause it wasn't used before. The chapter originally stood at A kai O, but after it wouldn't fit on our pin, it was decided by a male that helped begin the fraternity, that it should be AXO instead. We got a packet of Alpha Chi through the ages with a lot of info and fun stuff that we get to bring back to you all if you want to check it out.
The tour of DC was also amazing. Walking into the Lincoln memorial was something I honestly thought I would never see and was such a fantastic sight. There was a ton of people since it was around sunset so the sites were even more beautiful (of course my camera died right on the bus, even though I had JUST fully charged it. I am Murphy's Law, and repel technology), but Mallory and Jenni got some good shots! I learned some really cool info on the Korea and Vietnam memorials. For anyone that actually likes history the Korea War memorial was a really impactful site. It was created by Frank Gaylord (yes that’s his real last name) and was by far one of my favorites. There are 19 soldier statues all in the grotesque style of art to make them really realistic. Behind them is a stone wall with carvings inspired by photos from the war. When the sun rises and sets on the wall the shadows of the men are apparent, mixing with the sketches. The soldiers also have their helmets fashioned in different manners to represent each U.S. force (Marines, soldiers, sailors, and airmen) that helped in the war.
An interesting fact from the Vietnam War memorial is that it was created after the war to not represent the victory, but to represent progress and to commemorate the lost. Something I learned was that the memorial was commissioned by the government and the design was decided in a blind contest. They had four design propositions and didn't look at the names of designers until the winner was chosen. Unanimously the winner was chosen and turned out to be a school-aged Asian-American women. She motioned that the names of the men lost should, in fact, be the memorial. She also suggested that the lost be listed not in alphabetical order, but listed with the other men they were with when they passed. The wall was really inspirational. I even found a Barr on it. Probably no relation, but kinda random to find. There was also a criterion to be listed on the wall. Men that are deceased due to causes of the war such as agent orange (my Uncle served as a war medic in Vietnam and unfortunate passed due to cancer from agent orange exposure) or such as suicide because of Post-Traumatic stress disorder were not listed, but instead the names could be read out loud by a nearby statue and plaque. I would know more about the monument, but there was a local crazy running around very loudly cursing and threatening murder on the memorial guards for kicking him out, sooo I missed parts of the explanation. People watching sometimes just trumps learning.
I just realized I wrote a novel, sorry! If anyone is a nerd like me and actually was interested enough to keep reading those tidbits of history, thanks! We have one more day of convention ahead of us and we'll let you know how it all goes after!
LITB
Hannah
