Changes

2018 was another great year for the Beta Eta Deuteron chapter of Kappa Kappa Gamma! Our members continue to succeed in different ways on campus and in the world – they never fail to amaze us. Our strong internal culture and bond is accented by Kappa members’ extensive involvement in the larger Stanford atmosphere. We are proud to house members involved across campus, specifically on national championship-winning sports teams, presidents of business organizations, teaching assistants for classes, and more. One of our members was even named a Rhodes Scholar, and is currently studying abroad in Oxford, England! Our chapter at Stanford continued to work on various initiatives, namely supporting women’s empowerment and diversity & inclusion. We are pleased to note that due to our emphasis on diversity & inclusion, headquarters has made it a formal chapter council position that will now be implemented in all chapters across the nation. Léa Koob, our president this year, helped draft the proposal for this change at the fraternity’s National Convention in June. We are so excited for future members in this role as Diversity & Inclusion (D & I) chairman to have more support and guidance from fraternity headquarters. This year, we held four chapter meetings focusing on these important topics. Our D & I committee focused on issues like the history of exclusion in Greek Life and implicit bias. Through these workshops, we strive to better ourselves as a chapter, making sure all members, and all future members, will be comfortable in our chapter. We emphasized implicit bias training early in the year, in order to have this be a continuing discussion, not just something we focus on during recruitment. On October 29th of this year, one of our members, Tatie Balabanis, led the chapter through an activity of a class of which she is a teaching assistant (Psychology 103 – Intergroup Communication). In this activity, called an “identity walk,” we focused on exploring the different identities that members of our chapter value and had an open discussion about what some of these various identities mean to members of our chapter. Overall, it was a very successful year of action and conversation surrounding D & I within our chapter and within the broader community at Stanford. We are excited to continue to push these inclusivity efforts and strive for equity in our chapter and our university.

Our chapter feels just as good about our efforts in furthering our women’s empowerment initiatives as well. This is at the center of Kappa’s core values, and we pride ourselves on being a group of capable, passionate, and confident women. We aim to make a positive impact in the world, maintaining a constant focus on women’s empowerment. We do this through various initiatives internally, such as recognition programs at chapter meetings. Our chapter implemented programs such as KKGenius and Support a Sister to reward our members for their excellence inside and outside of the classroom. During the week, members are encouraged to nominate fellow sisters for their accomplishments, be it academic, athletic, or simply for being a strong and supportive sister. Members who are nominated are acknowledged and awarded during chapter meetings that week. Our chapter aims to create a cohesive and friendly environment within Kappa that allows all of our sisters to feel comfortable, and hopefully build on one another’s strengths, inspiring individual achievements in all areas of our members’ lives. Additionally, as a chapter we have tried to focus more of our philanthropic endeavors to help support our goal of empowering women in the broader community, we have seen our chapter used as an incredible platform for our members to accomplish positive change and have their voices heard in the community on campus. Our fraternity has tried to bring together our national philanthropy, Reading is Key, and our passion for addressing women’s issues and bringing awareness to sexual assault. This year, we have been intentional in bridging these two important causes. We planned an annual Reading is Key event, where we read and gave books to children of a local women’s shelter, in addition to brining toiletry kits to the women at the shelter. Our chapter is dedicated to both the fraternity’s national philanthropy and Beta Eta’s chosen philanthropy, Joyful Heart Foundation. At the 2018 National Convention, our chapter was recognized and awarded with the Signature Philanthropy Award (for the second year in a row)!

As part of the broader conversations currently being raised on campus, as discussed above, our chapter focused on thoroughly engaging with our D & I chair and committee over the course of the year. We want to make sure that our chapter reflects the community we are surrounded by on campus here at Stanford. This has changed the nature of the chapter for the better, as we have held several educational events about diversity and inclusion, especially before Recruitment. We have really worked to make our chapter of Kappa as accessible as possible to women in the Stanford community, especially regarding finances.

Our chapter is one of the most accessible in this respect for all members of the Stanford community, something we are very proud of.

Where does the chapter meet? We host a majority of our weekly meetings at the Women’s Community Center on campus, a feminist space that offers resources to promote gender equality. Through our well established relationship with the WCC, our leadership has had the opportunity to attend quarterly dinners in which they are connected with other women leaders and resources on campus. It has been a great experience getting to work with and learn from female leaders in all corners of campus.