Remember, remember the month of Movember?

It’s the last week of October and I am super excited for Movember to get here. No, that was not a typo you just read, I meant to write “movember.” What is Movember you might be wondering? Movember is a national and international movement to bring awareness to men’s health issues. During the month of November each year, Movember is responsible for the sprouting of moustaches on thousands of men’s faces. With their mustaches, these men raise vital funds and awareness for men’s health, specifically prostate cancer and other cancers that affect men. Here at my institution—Cal Poly, we are excited to be commencing our first ever campus wide campaign for Movember.

In the Fall issue of the MMKC newsletter, I reminded readers of the challenge I set for our readership during the summer to reach out to other campus constituencies to collaborate on a program revolving our college men. At Cal Poly, our campus motto is “Learn by doing.” It is a great motto and I take it seriously. The Movember Campaign provided a perfect opportunity to actively do something while helping students learn about an important cause. I also practice what I preach, so having remembered the challenge I set forth to our readership, I reached out to other departments on my campus for this endeavor. In the picture above, you will see some of the members of the Cal Poly Movember Campaign Committee. It is made up of colleagues from Men and Masculinity Program and Greek Life. We also made sure to have student members as well. It is the first time that my department (Residential Life and Education) as partnered with these two departments on a program involving our college men. Given the popularity of “No shave November,” we decided to host a mustache growing competition to help raise awareness of men’s health issues. The program we created is as follows:

This Cal Poly Mustache Growing Competition will have three levels:

1. Local-- Residence Hall, Greek Chapter and Student Organization

2. Semi Finals--All Residence Life Championship, All Inter-Fraternity Council, and All Student Life and Leadership.

3. The winners of these semi finals will go to the All Cal Poly Competition to be crowned the champion of our school.

As our contestants’ mustaches grow during the month of November, friends and strangers will ask why they are growing a mustache. These contestants will hand out an educational information card on men’s health issues and begin a dialog on prostate cancer and testicular cancer testing. At the mid-month mark, we will have a social gathering for our contestants to size up the competition and announce the prizes for the end of the month. In Residence Life, each hall’s Community Council has agreed to host and judge their in-hall competitions—another opportunity for collaboration. The Residence Life members of the Movember Committee will judge our All Residence Life competition with the help of our Coordinators of Student Development. During these past four weeks of October, we have distributed teaser fliers, created our competition’s Facebook page, created a Cal Poly team on the Movember site and have organized several informational meetings this week to promote and sign up contestants. Like I said at the beginning of this blog post…I’m super excited.

On a professional note, I must say that this opportunity has provided me an opportunity to work with other colleagues on campus that I normally would not have had an opportunity to partner with. I am getting to know these colleagues, yet, more importantly, I feel that I am also making new friends. It’s a win-win situation.

The Men and Masculinities Knowledge Community would love to hear about how you are partnering with other organizations on your campus or in your community. Shoot us an email or comment in the section below.

Lastly, I’ll post an update and pics on the results of the collaborative effort on my campus. Stay tuned.

Osvaldo Del Valle,

Learning Community Coordinator | Residential Life & Education

California Polytechnic State University