Changes
→Highlights of 2014
Our chapter meetings take place in a rented facility, The American Legion, about 5 minutes away from our chapter house. Eta Nu has lived in our beautiful house for the past 5 years. All members have the opportunity to live in the house. We rent our house from a local realty company, Real Source Property Management. 18 sisters can live in the house at a time. Our chapter has always lived in the same house.
==Highlights of 2015==
Santa Clara Kappa Kappa Gamma Eta Nu Chapter had an excellent year in 2015! Eta Nu Kappas continue to
participate in various school leadership positions and stay involved in a variety of organizations and clubs on campus. Eta Nu remains to be active in all possible philanthropy events and in our Santa Clara community. We are very proud of everything we have accomplished this past year and only hope to grow and excel in the coming years!
Winter Quarter started off strong with Initiation Week. This week is very special to our Chapter because it gives us a chance to connect with our Kappa sisters and values. It also allows us to catch up with our sisters who have returned from their study abroad adventures. Having our Eta Nu family together again reminds us of the important role Kappa plays in each of our lives. Activities during the week range from an ice skating sisterhood event to family dinners and a ceremony for the return of the New Member pin. For the fourth year in a row, Initiation was held at the University of California, Berkeley house. The weekend started with Fireside on Friday night followed by Initiation on Saturday morning. Family members of actives and new members were able to attend, making it very special for our Chapter. Eta Nu was very happy to initiate 48 young women into our sisterhood. Winter quarter continued quickly with officer elections and transitions. As always, the Nominating Committee spent a lot of time and effort in considering the next future leaders of the chapter. We could not be more pleased with the group of women that have come together to lead Eta Nu through another strong year as a chapter. Keeping active in the Santa Clara Greek Community, our members showcased some fantastic dance moves in support of Alpha Phi’s “Star Search.” Eta Nu proudly supports other philanthropy events through our participation and donations. Eta Nu celebrated our successful quarter with our annual Sapphire Ball Formal Dance. This is a favorite event for Eta Nu as it gives us all a chance to come together and have a wonderful evening of fun along with lots of singing and dancing. The following week Eta Nu was very excited to hold our Second Annual “Kappa Karaoke” event in which other
students create teams and perform. Eta Nu raised over $1,200 for the Kappa Kappa Gamma Foundation! We had a great response from our community in support of the event. Everyone had so much fun at the event, we look forward to our future events held for the foundation. For Parents’ Weekend, Eta Nu held an open house reception for girls to show their parents our house and what “being a kappa” means to them. A variety of t-shirts, photos, and food were on display to welcome our parents. As always, our “KKG” letters were placed outside the house for our sisters and parents to take pictures together! In addition to showing off our house, we raised over $250 for books that we donated at our Reading is Fundamental event. Every year our Chapter looks forward to visiting local elementary schools in support of Reading is Fundamental. In 2015, we had a huge showing of girls who wanted to participate in the event. As always, Eta Nu goes on Dr. Seuss Day! This is such a fun way to be creative and silly with the children. This year we were thrilled to be able to
supply every child with 2 books! Our chapter is looking forward to reading and playing with the children again next year! Girls from our chapter were excited to make teams for Delta Gamma’s Philanthropy Event, Anchor Slam (a basketball tournament). As our quarter came to a close, our Vice President of Academic Excellence kept us all in check by celebrating Academic Excellence Month. Academics stayed on our minds through the various events planned for us. From ice cream to guest speakers and daily study rooms, Eta Nu was happy to talk about and support the bettering of our academics and achievements!
Spring quarter continues to be a busy, yet fun time for Eta Nu! The sun is shining in beautiful Santa Clara and many philanthropy events take place! Spring for Eta Nu started off with our smiling members taking their composite pictures. A few weeks later, we were lucky enough to send some of our Chapter Council to the Regional Leadership Conference in Fresno, CA. Officers were able to talk to other Kappa’s from all over the West Coast and get ideas on how to better each chapter. We had the pleasure of driving back from our conference with our lovely LC, Riley. Our Chapter loved spending the week with Riley and enjoyed gaining new insight on how to make Eta Nu the best it can be. Soon after, Eta Nu celebrated the end of the year together with our Spring Fling Semi Dance. It is always a wonderful event to dance the night away with our sisters. To end the night, the juniors, sophomores, and freshmen sent the seniors off in style with a very enthusiastic O-Pat. We were very busy that week as our big philanthropy event, Kappa Karnival, was that Saturday. The
day had perfect weather to walk around the carnival-like events and eat pizza, snow-cones, and chicken wings. We were very proud to raise $8,738 for Lymelight Foundation! The Lymelight Foundation is very close to Eta Nu’s heart as it was founded by one of our sister’s family, as she suffers from Lymes disease. Sororities, Fraternities, and other organizations love to participate in our philanthropy events, as we do in theirs! Spring is filled with many Philanthropy events for our Greek System. Kappa Alpha Theta’s philanthropy, Theta Dodgeball, allows Eta Nu to demonstrate our enthusiastic athletic ability! In keeping with support throughout the Greek community, Kappa had multiple teams participate in Sigma Chi’s “Derby Days.” The week consisted of various events ranging from a can drive, fashion show and sing off. Next, Kappa supported Sigma Pi’s philanthropy by participating in an all day beach volleyball tournament. We all loved having some fun in the sun while supporting a great cause. Later that Spring, Greek Awards were hosted to reward all of our hard work
as a Panhellenic Association. Eta Nu was happy to receive awards for outstanding scholarship, outstanding new member education, and outstanding sisterhood. Every year we look forward to these awards as they acknowledge all the hard work of our members and Greek community! As the quarter and academic year came to a close, the seniors celebrated their wonderful memories in Kappa Kappa Gamma by having a Senior Brunch and Tea. The seniors had a last chance to gather together and reflect on how special their experience in Kappa has been thus far. We were sorry to see them graduate in June, but very excited to see how they continue to stay apart of Kappa in the future!
After a long summer, Fall Quarter began with a multitude of recruitment practices leading up to a heavily
anticipated Fall Recruitment! Chapter Morale was high after a fun week filled with bonding activities in preparation for recruitment. We were so excited to welcome our LC, Whitney, into our house. From park adventures, movie time and talking about our Kappa experiences, we loved getting to know Whitney. We had such a fun week and hope Whitney comes back for a visit with Eta Nu soon! Sisterhood day of recruitment was a themed day and our chapter wore lavender and white outfits. The backyard was decorated in lavender, white, and grey decorations. We had 325 PNMs come to Kappa that day. The next day was Philanthropy Day, and we were allowed to invite back 198 PNMs. The second day we wore different shades of blue dresses and made Dr. Seuss decorations for the backyard. Our assistant philanthropy chairman and a fellow junior gave a presentation to the PNMs about the different philanthropies we help. The next night was Preference Night and we had 98 girls come back to our house. The actives wore navy dresses and the theme was "A Golden Opportunity" so there were plenty of gold and glittery decorations in the backyard. We read surprise letters to the actives and made a toast to Kappa--it was a really lovely night. Our hard work and passion throughout Recruitment proved to pay
off when we received a fantastic Iota class of 52 members! We were beyond thrilled to welcome such an involved, gracious and cheerful pledge class into our family. We all celebrated with a fun-filled night of Bid-Day bowling. Our Bid Day Theme was “Kappily Ever After.” Everyone wore our adorable Recruitment/Bid Day Shirts and all sorts of girly tutu’s and tiaras. The New Member program began shortly after and continued throughout the fall quarter. Soon after Bid Day, Eta Nu gathered to celebrate our Founder’s Day. We celebrated at our house with brunch, bonding, and Kappa trivia bingo! Soon after, our sisters gathered with Sigma Chi and had our fourth annual Powderpuff Football Game. The week was filled with fun activities such as our team draft, Thanksgiving Dinner, and intense practices all leading up to the big game Saturday. The day was filled with enthusiasm and fun for all, but the best part was that throughout this process we were
able raise money and donate to RIF and the Julian Street Inn, a homeless shelter. Later that week, our New Member Chairman held our annual New Member Retreat. The girls engaged in group-bonding exercises where the Iota class was grouped off and asked to brainstorm what Kappa means to them and then shared their answers with their class. They also made an adorable introductory video that was sent to all of the girls studying abroad so that they can start to learn the names of all the new Kappa’s! All in all, the retreat served as a bonding opportunity between the Iota class members and was a very successful event. The quarter continued with our Fall Semi Dance- Fall Ball. The girls loved the venue, food, and dancing. Semi dances are always a fun night for the ladies of Eta Nu. This took us to Thanksgiving break and followed with our last week before Christmas break. As always, the last week of Fall Quarter is also Big Little Week! Most Bigs spent their breaks excitedly crafting away for the new members of their Kappa families. This week is filled with presents,
surprises, sweat, laughs, tears, and many late nights for the big sisters. The week was great and all the families welcomed their new addition to the clan with an array of silly outfits and surprises. We are glad everyone was able to participate and share in one of the best nights of the year! We are very proud of the successful year Eta Nu had and cannot wait to see what will come in 2016!
Most of the changes that Eta Nu has encountered in the past year have been due to adjusting to the new
Panhellenic Council. Greek life is not affiliated with Santa Clara University, so we rely heavily on the
direction from our Panhellenic Council to manage the greek community. Eta Nu had three representatives
on the Panhellenic Council this past year: Panhellenic Treasurer, Secretary, and our Panhellenic Delegate.
With the advocacy of these members, Kappa Kappa Gamma continues to be as well informed as we can be about upcoming events and happenings.
The women of Eta Nu can best be described as caring, genuine, academic, personable, and involved individuals. We emphasize the importance of bettering ourselves individually and as a chapter through our community involvement, chapter education, and sisterhood bonding. Our chapter never fails to take care of one another and look out for the best interest of each member. We value and support the differences between each other. It is important for us to hold true to our sisterhood and care that we have for each and every member. Eta Nu is a group of strong women that strive to support each other in order to reach our full potential.
Chapter Philanthropy:
What organization(s) has your chapter historically/traditionally raised money for, or donated hours to, in
your community?
Why did your chapter choose this organization(s) to support?
The organization in our community that Eta Nu supports is the Lymelight Foundation. This
organization raises money to provide grants children in order for them to receive proper
treatment, as well as raise awareness. The reason Eta Nu chose this organization is because it
was founded by one of our sister’s family, as she suffers from Lymes disease. As a Chapter we
wanted to show our support for our sister and her family as they strived to help others who
suffered from this disease. To raise money for Lymelight Foundation, Eta Nu hosts our
annual Kappa Karnival during Spring Quarter. This past Spring we were able to raise $8,738
for Lymelight! We also show our continuous support to the Kappa Kappa Gamma
Foundation and to Reading is Fundamental. In order to raise money for Kappa Kappa
Gamma Foundation, we host Kappa Karaoke in Winter Quarter. Eta Nu was proudly able to
raise $1,224 for the Kappa Kappa Gamma Foundation! Our main form of donation for RIF
is donating books to a local schools. Eta Nu’s favorite event in supporting RIF is when our
sisters have the opportunity to visit Briarwood Elementary School on Dr. Seuss Day. In
preparation for this event we had sisters and their parents donate books at our Open House
during Parents’ Weekend. Our Chapter collected a total of 65 new books for this event and
raised $255 for RIF! On this day we read to kids in three different classrooms, do Cat in the
Hat crafts, and this year we were able to send each child home with 2 books! Eta Nu is very
proud for all of the hard work that we put in to raise money for our organizations!
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'''Highlights of the 2020s:''' (Information from chapter history reports, scholarship, group honors/awards, traditions, special events, changes on campus or within chapter, overall nature of the chapter, chapter goals, challenges and how they were overcome, etc.)