Club marks 107 years of service

The oldest surviving campus organization at Caltech is not, as one might guess, a science society, a fraternity or sorority, or a squad of sports-team boosters. The distinction belongs to a little-known service organization called the Gnome Club, which recently celebrated its 107th year and a long tradition of service to the Institute.

Not bad for a club that was founded at Throop College, the predecessor to Caltech, on March 9, 1897. The Gnome (pronounced know-me) Club, also known as the fraternity Kappa Gamma, started out as a secret society and was never affiliated with the traditional college Greek system.

“Over the years the Gnome Club has had a variety of roles: literary, honorary, secret society, and fraternity,” says club president Joe Cheng, who received his BS from Caltech in 1985. “The objective of the club is to serve the Institute, to stimulate social activities, and to maintain and perpetuate Caltech’s tradition of excellence.” It also sponsors two undergraduate scholarship programs.

The first and oldest was started by an initial gift from Stan and Mary Johnson, and has grown through gifts from Gnome Club members. The second, designated exclusively for engineering majors, is the result of a gift from the estate of Ray Labory. Through these endowment funds, the Gnome Club is able to provide scholarship support to several students every year.
Club members, meanwhile, are very active in the Caltech Y and the Alumni Association, organizations that strive to strengthen the bonds between Caltech and the greater community.

Although the club’s formally organized events are social gatherings—the largest, Founders’ Night, celebrates the club’s inception—the Gnomes have always concentrated on improving students’ experience at Caltech. Senior-class members, alumni, faculty, staff members, and graduate students who have demonstrated leadership and loyalty to the Institute are invited to join. The roster of Gnomes shows that only 1,128 people have been welcomed to the club.

In its early days, the Gnome Club, one of five local fraternities, was primarily a social club whose members lived in their own off-campus house. Members drew inspiration for the name from the benevolent race of mythical gnomes said to have inhabited the Greek island of Samothrace, beings that were known for their creativity and industriousness. The club took as their mascot the pygmy owl, known as the gnome owl. The club’s emblem bears a likeness of the owl perched on a crescent moon.

Initiation of new members into all five of the fraternities ended in 1931 with the opening of the first undergraduate houses at Caltech.

While supporting the new student houses, the Gnomes felt that their fellowship was too valuable to abandon. “After the fraternities were phased out, the membership became an off-campus alumni organization, and the relationship with Caltech continued,” Cheng says. The club coasted along for the next 18 years and admitted only six new members from the alumni pool. The turning point came on Founders’ Night in 1949, to which the club invited the president of Caltech.

“Lee DuBridge came and got wind of the Gnome Club and decided that this was a good tradition,” Cheng says. “He approved the initiation of graduating seniors. Being from the East Coast, he was enthusiastic about traditions.”

That year, the club initiated 14 new members into its ranks, and when Caltech began admitting female undergraduates in 1970, the Gnomes welcomed their first woman soon after. Today, graduate students, faculty members, and staff may be invited to join the Gnomes.

One of those staff members is Athena Castro, the executive director of the Caltech Y, who became a Gnome several years ago. She says that many of the Y’s board members are Gnomes, and members of the student ExComm are often invited to join.

“The board members are very active in the Y,” Castro says. “I know that they also try very hard to bridge the gap and create a closer relationship between alumni and Caltech.”
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