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→Highlights of Spring 2015
Zeta Chi holds their weekly chapter meetings in a Marist College classroom in Donnelly Hall. Zeta Chi does not have housing for its members.
==Highlights of Spring 2015==Spring 2015
Zeta Chi started the spring semester off with a bang! In February we held recruitment and our theme was Garden/Lilly for the first and third night. This year Panhellenic decided to show greek unity by having each sorority select a decade to theme their second night of recruitment. We were excited to represent the 1920s. Simultaneously we were also pleased to have Jo, our Leadership Consultant return to Marist to assist us with recruitment and improving our chapter. Though we did have to change the dates of recruitment and a couple weekly meetings due to the tremendous amount of snow we received, we were happy to welcome 20 new members into our sisterhood. We held a new member celebration in the student center which included taking pictures with huge Kappa Balloons and socializing. To get to know the new members better, we held a sophomore event at which the sophomores and new members decorated cookies and played just dance. We also enjoyed ice skating at the Hudson Valley Civic Center as one of our sisterhood events. As for Philanthropy we raised $100 for the American Heart Association at our bake sale. Three of our sister, Kelly, Colleen and Emily also jumped in the river at the Polar Plunge in Fishkill. This semester the Standards committee started choosing a Kappa Klassy Value of the Week. This value is chosen from a list of qualities that we compiled as a chapter that every kappa should uphold.
We started March off with a sisterhood event which was a private shopping trip at Francesca's in the Poughkeepsie Galleria. We also continued to hold events to welcome and integrate our new members into the chapter. These included a Junior ice cream sundae social with the new members, new member picture day (take pictures of new members around campus wearing letters) and big/little week. This year for big little reveal the bigs left socks in their littles room on the last day of big little week. Then at reveal the bigs wore matching socks and lined up with blankets covering them. The littles stood in front of the person with matching socks and the bigs let down their blankets to reveal themselves. At the end of March we were excited to officially welcome them into our sisterhood at initiation.
In April we partnered up with Hoopla, a local frozen yogurt place, to donate some of every purchase one afternoon to the Kappa Kappa Gamma Foundation. Christina our President, Meghan our VPO and Katie our head of Standards donated this money when they attended the Province meeting in Hartford, Connecticut. We had a lot of sisterhood events this month. The first was a tye dye event where everyone got the chance to tye dye a shirt. The sisters of Zeta Chi also attended the semi annual dance ensemble show, Serendipity which a large number of our chapter performed in. As the weather started to warm up, we went on a morning hike at Ferncliff Forest. The trail had a huge observation tower that we nervously climbed to the top of to the amazing views of the Hudson Valley. Our Philanthropy events this month included making crafts and playing sports at the Children's Home of Poughkeepsie as well as participating in Relay for Life. At Greek Week, we fought hard at the field games, eating contests, and trivia and placed third for our efforts.
In May Zeta Chi participated in their semi-annual philanthropy event, Reading is Fundamental. We held a Kappa Kickball event to raise money for RIF. Following the game we headed over to the Children's home of Poughkeepsie where we did crafts, distributed books, did face painting and plaid basketball with the kids. We were sad to bid our seniors farewell at our senior sendoffs. We shared memories, took pictures and celebrated all that our seniors have contributed to Zeta Chi over lunch. We certainly ended the year on a high note receiving the first ever Marist Greek Excellence Award.
Fall 2015
Zeta Chi started off the new semester much smaller than last year, we had about 30 seniors graduate and we had 13 of our sister studying abroad all over the world. We did not hold fall recruitment, this was a challenge for us because the sixe of our chapter seemed so small this semester but we grew closer as whole because of it. We held our first philanthropy event of the semester the day of move in which was to help at the Children’s Home or Poughkeepsie’s 5k race and hand our water bottles to the runners. Even through all of the chaos of move in we were able to have some of our sisters represent Kappa at the race.
We held our first sisterhood event in September at the Vanderbilt Mansion in Hyde Park, NY. We had a lovely picnic on the grass and gardens outside the historic mansion. It was a great way to catch up with sisters from the summer break and start the semester off strong. Shortly after that Marist held their activities fair and we represented Kappa to potential new members for the spring semester. Also in September we held a video shoot for our recruitment video that we will play during recruitment in the upcoming Spring. At Marist we are located right on the Hudson River, so we filmed down by the riverfront on a beautiful Sunday morning. Our footage will show the potential new members everything Kappa is about. We also participated in Marist’s Campus wide hazing awareness week. Greek council held an Instagram contest with the theme these hand don’t haze. The person with the most creative post and most likes won a gift card to a local restaurant. One of our fellow Kappa’s Kacey O’Brien won the prize.
October rolled around soon and it was busy month for our chapter. We started the month off with another sisterhood event called “Paint Your Sisters.” This event was create to bnd our sisterhood together even close than it was before. All the girls who participated wore white t-shirts and sat in a circle. One girl would stand inside an they would touch a sister who inspires them most (etc.) with their painted hand. They went around a few times so every sister had handprints all over them, showing that they are loved by every single one of their sisters. We plan to make this annual event for our sisterhood. Shortly after that we had about ten of our members represent Kappa at taping of the Meredith Vieira Show in NYC, an alum from Marist reached out to Kappa to see if any girls wanted to see a taping of the show, we had a small number of girls go only because it was held during the week as classes were going on. It was great for Kappa to show support at the show.
We held our Founder Day celebration two days before Founders Day to ensure that, as many of our sisters could be present at the event. Our education chairman. Meghan Gleason and our registrar, Cara Guerin planned the event. We ordered shirts for the vent, made some adorable Kappa themed desserts and host a raffle with great prizes for our sisters. Also to show some history of the chapter we traced our chapters big and little trees as far back as we could and put the trees on display at our event. All of the sisters loved the idea and are excited to see most of those trees grow in the springtime.
Our second sisterhood event of the month was apple and pumpkin picking at a local farm. The girls of Zeta Chi drank apple cider, picked apples, and took cute fall pictures with some pumpkins.
We held our first Philanthropy event in October; we hosted a baked sale to benefit breast cancer awareness and partners with another sorority on campus Kappa Lambda Psi. Together we raised over $400 donated to breast cancer research. On October 22nd and 23rd we held our annual RIF Fundraiser. On the 22nd we hosted a pasta dinner and all the proceeds from the dinner were donated to RIF and on the 23rd Zeta Chi went to the Family and Children Center of Poughkeepsie and held a reading carnival for the kids in the after school program there. All of the girls enjoyed reading and doing crafts with the kids, we could tell that it brightened up their day because they brightened up ours. Our last sisterhood event of the semester was a paint party. Zeta Chi met up and recreated a picture of a sunflower on our canvases. It was a great fun and creative event to have and everyone walked home with a new piece of artwork to decorate their dorm with.
To start off November we had our first philanthropy of the month. Caitlyn Flynn, Philanthropy chair organized a workshop with a company called Bright Pink, they help educate women about their bodies and raise awareness for breast cancer and other women’s cancers. We also hosted a blood drive and partnered with another fraternity on campus, Zeta Psi for it. Many sisters donated and helped make sure all the people who donated had a good recovery. We had a few sisterhood event this month. One event that was not hosted by Kappa but many sisters take part in was the Marist College Dance Ensemble, one member of Kappa, Samantha Soprano is the president of the dance ensemble and she put on a great show with the talents of dancers from the entire school. Many other Kappas’ who are not in the Dance Ensemble went to the show to show their support. Another one of our sisterhood events we had in November was a mani pedi spa night. It was a great night to watch movies, paint our nails and hang with our sisters. As a senior sisterhood event we held a zumba class for all the seniors to participate in, it was a fun and healthy way for the seniors to get some of their last moments with their sisters.
Once we came back from Thanksgiving break, the end of the semester didn’t seem too far away but we had plenty events planned before the end. We hosted a hot chocolate sale on campus to raise money for a gift to buy for the giving tree here at Marist. One of our last sisterhood events as yoga and it was a great way to distress right before finals started. On the December 7th, we held our annual Sapphire Ball at Villa Borghese in Wappingers Falls. Each sister received a fun Kappa superlative and enjoyed dancing the night away. All of the sisters looked beautiful for the event. To end the semester we held our Kappa Kash Raffle and Holiday party. Kappa Kash is a point system we have and every event a sister attends they will get points and those points get transferred into raffle tickets that they can use at the party to get Kappa themed gifts. Almost all the sisters walked away with a gift and we did secret Santa between the sisterhood. Everyone had a great time exchanging gifts and hanging out right before finals. The year was finished off with the election of a new Chapter Council.
On campus Marist is just completing their new science building, which will be the home to the new science gradate programs and home to the biology department. Marist also began construction for a new dorming facility, which will house juniors and seniors. The hall will have four single dorms to a suite and also have a gym and new dining hall in the building too. The president of Marist College also announced his retirement at the end of the spring semester for this year in 2016. He has done a great job building up Marist College to what it is now and Kappa is sad to see him leave.
Our chapter is becoming relatively small due to the large amount of seniors gradating and the burden of not having fall recruitment due to our school’s policies. But we have prevailed and have become so close as a whole. We always support one another and try to attend other club events to support sisters who are in those clubs. Our chapter does not have a house but we always have fun meeting at other places on campus or other sisters suites on campus.
What organization(s) has your chapter historically/traditionally raised money for, or donated hours to, in your community?
We typically raise money for the Kappa Kappa Gamma Foundation and Reading is Fundamental.
Why did your chapter choose this organization(s) to support?
Our chapter chose these organizations because we would like to focus heavily on two organizations versus more so that we can give more to each because if we spread ourselves too thin its difficult to give a lot to each organization. These two organizations represent Kappa Kappa Gamma to the highest and we appreciate everything they do, which is why we donate to them.