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Our chapter meetings are held in rooms owned by Northeastern. Chapter meetings were held in 97 Cargill Hall and 200 Richards Hall in the spring and fall semesters, respectively. Our chapter does not have a house, lodge, apartment or suite and we have never had one in our history.
Achieving our goals was an essential part of our 2016 school year. We successfully raised our chapter’s overall GPA by booking study rooms and enforcing academic excellence goals. We decreased absences by enforcing rules with recording secretary and VPS check-ins, utilizing surveys to plan events, and taking attendance at all planned events. We increased our Panhel attendance by utilizing committees for panhel meetings. Also, our sisters gained a better understanding and appreciation of ritual through our two Inspiration weeks. Lastly, we have positively promoted our new philanthropy and logged attendance hours to ensure we are forming a strong relationship with Christopher’s Haven. Overall, the 2016 school year has been a year full of sisterhood and high achievements for the amazing women of Eta Omicron.
==Highlights of 2017==
The Eta Omicron chapter of Kappa Kappa Gamma had a wonderful year in 2017. In early January, the Eta Omicron Chapter Council developed five goals for the chapter to move towards achieving throughout the year. These goals were to form a stronger relationship with the other Northeastern fraternities and sororities on campus and the greater Northeastern communities, to increase understanding and appreciation of rituals, bylaws, standing rules and history, to emphasize sisterhood in all aspects of chapter life and programming, to make better use of committees, and to increase study hours by 50%.
During the spring semester our chapter had many events to help strengthen sisterhood within our sorority as well as our relationships with other sororities on campus. We held events such as exercise classes and holiday celebrations within our sorority as well as with other organizations and chapters.
In March, Northeastern had its annual Greek Week, for which we were paired with the gentlemen of the Pi Delta Psi and Beta Gamma Epsilon fraternities. We participated in Greek Sing and Greek Goddess as part of the Greek Week festivities. During the Fraternity and Sorority Life Awards Ceremony, our chapter was incredibly honored to be named Northeastern’s Panhellenic Chapter of the Year for 2016.
In April, we celebrated our soon-to-be graduates and all their accomplishments and the hard work they had put in throughout their years at Northeastern with Senior Week. We held events including Senior Wills and Legacy Night, and arranged other fun events for the seniors to celebrate together as a graduating class. We had our annual Tea Party on Sunday April 2, where we honored our sister Emily Horn with the Loyalty Award. We graduated 30 incredible sisters at the end of this week. Our Formal was our last event of the semester and was held on April 22 at the Taj Hotel rooftop in Boston. Our sisters had a great time celebrating all of their hard work and achievements with one another after another great semester before parting for the summer.
On the first Saturday of the fall semester, September 9th, our sisters attended our annual sisterhood retreat, located for the first time at YMCA Camp Beckett in Beckett, Massachusetts. Sisters spent time bonding and enjoying each other’s company by playing games such as Red Rover and mastering the high ropes course the camp had to offer. Our sisters spent the night in cabins strengthening our sisterhood before returning to campus Sunday afternoon.
Formal recruitment began the following Saturday and spanned two weekends. On September 25th our chapter welcomed 41 excited new members into our Kappa class. 2 members of our Kappa class were transfer students from Dickinson College and Marist College who were initiated into our sorority at their past colleges and were being welcomed into Eta Omicron with the new members.
We hosted a Founders Day celebration at the Northeastern Alumni Center on October 22nd for our sisters. Also in attendance were members of the BIAA and members from the Harvard University and Babson College chapters. We had a lovely ceremony and brunch to celebrate our fraternity.
On October 29th our Nominating Committee met to slate sisters for our new Chapter Council. At formal chapter on Tuesday November 7th we selected our officers for 2017.
We hosted our annual Owl Prowl on Wednesday November 1 to provide another opportunity for active sisters and new members to relax and get to know each other a little better. Our families were very excited to grow at our Big/Little reveal that Friday, November 3rd. With initiation approaching, our Inspiration Week began Sunday November 12th. On Thursday, we held our canvas/fleur de lis exchange for bigs and littles. We held our Fireside ceremony that Friday November 16th after a week filled with sisterhood events and bonding opportunities. After Fireside, the soon-to-be initiates and their bigs spent time bonding in a sisterhood cozy.
This year our chapter held 2 initiation ceremonies so that we could accommodate all of our new members and their busy schedules. On Saturday November 18th we were ecstatic to initiate 38 new members into our chapter and pass 18 senior sisters through their final Red Room ceremony. During this ceremony, one new member was also initiated to the Delta Nu chapter of the University of Massachusetts Amherst. On Sunday November 19th, one senior sister went through her final Red Room ceremony and 2 more new members were initiated into our chapter. We could not be more excited to have welcomed 40 wonderful new sisters to our chapter!
Our chapter meetings are held in rooms owned by Northeastern. Chapter meetings were held in 201 Mugar Hall and 101 Churchill Hall in the spring and fall semesters, respectively. Our chapter does not have a house, lodge, apartment or suite, and we have never had one in our history.
Our last event of the semester was our Semi Formal, which was held at Guilt Nightclub in Boston on December 1st. Our sisters danced the night away and celebrated all their triumphs and achievements from the semester.
Philanthropy played a major role in our chapter throughout the year. We partnered with Alpha Epsilon Phi to host our annual Lip Sync for Life event on March 20th. On March 22nd, our sisters volunteered at the Greater Boston Food Bank, where we helped sort food and make many meals possible for those in need. On March 24th our chapter participated in Northeastern’s Relay for Life event, raising a total of $21,879 for the American Cancer Society and were proudly named the top fundraising team for the event. We held our Reading is Fundamental event of the spring semester on April 1st at the Orchard Gardens K-8 Pilot School in Roxbury Crossing, MA. For this event 13 of our sisters visited the school to read Fish Out of Water to the first grade students and brought them all books to take home with them.
On Sunday October 15th we held our fall philanthropy event, our annual Kappa Kickoff flag football tournament. The event started at 2 PM and we had a total of 42 teams. We were very excited to have raised just over $1,100 for our local philanthropy Christopher’s Haven. On Friday December 1st, we held our Reading is Key event of the fall semester. For this event, 15 of our sisters visited the first grader classes at the Orchard Gardens K-8 Pilot School in Roxbury, MA. We used the money we had raised throughout the semester to purchase books to give to each student, and handed them out at this time. We read The Giving Tree to the students and engaged in a fun, educational activity with them. Their enthusiasm and gratitude was palpable, and our sisters truly loved having the opportunity to bring more literature into these children’s lives.
Achieving our goals was a vital part of our 2017 school year. We successfully formed stronger relationships with the other Northeastern fraternities and sororities on campus and the greater Northeastern communities by creating a sign up sheet for every Fraternity/Sorority Life event to ensure that members of our chapter were present at every event, collaborating with and supporting other organizations on campus, and doing our best to hold an event each month with our Panhel pair. We increased our sisters’ understanding and appreciation of rituals, bylaws, standing rules, and history by presenting a bylaw/standing rule of the week at chapter and in the TWIK each week, practicing a ritual song at every chapter, and emphasizing both Kappa and chapter history throughout the New Member period. Our chapter emphasized sisterhood in all aspects of chapter life and programming by promoting standards as a resource to strengthen relationships and mediate conflicts, encouraging rearranged seating at informal chapter meetings, and offering one internal sisterhood event per month. In order to make better use of committees, our chapter chose to give members of the committees titles or roles when appropriate, host one committee bonding event per semester, and create a group agreement per committee including method of communication and goals. Our final goal was to increase study hours by 50%, which we worked to achieve by encouraging sisters to log their study hours on the Gin System, rewarding the sister/group of sisters with the most study hours at the end of each determined period of time, and creating study groups and teams by major. For the spring semester we had the highest GPA on campus for the 4th semester in a row. In conclusion, 2017 has been a year of many accomplishments and sisterhood for the incredible sisters of Eta Omicron.