Frequently Asked Questions

While we have taken cursory percautions to keep search engins from storing the contents of Class Notes, and Alumnae Directory pages, please remember that this is a world viewable site. Please be cautious when deciding what to post. We will not display contact information, or information we feel may be too detailed for the web. However, the SSA Alumnae Network is not responsible for individual member messages posted to public forums or pages on this site.

All information collected through this site is confidential and will not be released without your permission. Contact information is kept in an offline database, and is NEVER sold. Your contact information will only be shared with other Network members if you give us permission to do so.

Please note that all information submitted as "Class Notes" is considered to be web publishable material, and will be posted to our site. The webmasters reserve the right to edit Class Notes for content and length. We will not post e-mail addresses in order to prevent spam bots from getting them.

You may change/update your information at any time, including your permission to share your contact info.

All former faculty, staff, sisters, board members, and students (regardless of if you actually graduated from the Academy) are invited to register with the Network. We also accept registrations from Friends of SSA, including Abby affiliates, and other SSA community members. Please note that we do not handle the organizing of events for the Abbey.

Any registered member can request contact information for those listed in our directory.

Yes. Just select "No" when asked if we may share your information on the "Update Your Contact Info" form. We will keep you updated on all Network happennings, but will not list you in the directory, and will not share your contact info with other members.

No. We realize that as a class organizer, you may have a very legitamate reason for wanting the information, but supplying full lists violates our Privacy Policy. We would, however be happy to contact your class on your behalf.

The Network is run entirely by SSA Alumnae. Below is information on the 3 people who currently filter all of the information posted to and received from this site.

Mercedes Downie ('96) is the head reunion organizer for the 2006 July all school reunion. She currently resides in Denver, CO and works for the Starz Denver International Film Festival. Mercedes mostly deals with e-mails regarding the reunion, preregistration, and event coordinating.

Teresa Hernandez ('97) is one of the Webmasters for this site, and also oversees reunion registrations. She is currently a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley. Teresa has been designing and managing websites for multimedia projects, theater productions, and other groups for 6 years. She handles most of the regular webpage content updates and e-mails sent through the site. Because the Paypal account is in her name, she also sees all of the reunion registration transactions.

Jill Menning ('97) also volunteers as a webmaster for this site. She is a technical writer in Houston, and has been building and managing websites for 7 years, including being a part of the web staff for Texas A&M at Galviston. Jill keeps the offline member database up to date, deals with site hosting issues, and also reviews and responds to e-mails sent through the site.

These are certainly not all of the people who are contributing to the Network, but these are pretty much the folks who deal with administrivia.

Because we are charging for reunion tickets at cost, and will not be keeping an open bank account after the reunion is over, we have established a temporary checking account to hold reunion payments. If you would like to examine our books, please submit a request to the webmasters. They will forward the information to the reunion planners.

A $5 flat service fee will be added to every online ticket order. This is to be used to cover the Paypal service charge, and offset the cost of incidentals such as name badges and printing.

We do not currently accept monitary donations. We would, however, very much appreciate you donating some of your time. If you are interested, please read our "Want to Help?" section.

No. We don't charge fees or collect dues (basically, we have no money), so we didn't feel it necessary to register as a non-profit. Thus far the money for internet hosting, etc has been donated by the network organizers.

The SSA Alumnae Network is not run by SSA Chicago or overseen by the Sisters there. The organization is run independently by SSA Alumnae. However, we have been featured in 2 issues of Sacro Specto, the OSB Chicago Newsletter. A number of the sisters in Chicago know us (the initial organizers) personally, and if you would care to double check, we suggest you call Sr. Benita Coffey at St. Scholastica Academy, Chicago.

Because this site is run on an entirely volunteer basis, from time to time our webmasters may fall behind in updating the site (this tends to happen around crunch time at our respective jobs). We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. If you are worried that we didn't receive your information, please feel free to drop us an e-mail.

All of the people for whom we have permission to share contact information are listed on our Directory page. If you do not find who you are looking for there, we recommend that you post a message under "Looking For" in the online forum.

We encourage you to send us contact information for other SSA-ers. We would be happy to drop them an e-mail with information about this site. However, only they can list themselves in the directory.

We realize that not everyone is a regular user of the internet or e-mail. For those of you who would like to register via snail mail, or know others who do, you can find printable froms in our Forms Archive. We currently only provide e-mail updates on Network events. However, for specific Reunion issues, we would be happy to stay in contact by post.

Please see our "Introduction to online forums" documentation. Click here to download the PDF document.

Please see our "Introduction to the SSA Photo Archive" documentation. Click here to download the PDF document.