Chatham LIGHT Club Wants Students’ Ideas
Rachel Coleman ’26, third from right, and Kiera Baker ’26, fourth from right, pose with Chatham LIGHT members and local high school students after a tour of “Revolving Doors,” an exhibit in the Jennie King Mellon Library. (Nicholas Haberman via Rachel Coleman).
When Kiera Baker recalled Chatham LIGHT Club’s painting event last year, she remembered a student who was among the last to arrive. He took a brush and made strokes on his canvas. The resulting work would be taken to be screen printed and, eventually, displayed on campus, but he didn’t know that.
This man didn’t even know where he was, Baker said.
“He said, ‘I’ve been sitting all day, studying. I needed this. Thank you for hosting this event.... What do you guys do?’” said Baker, a second-year student majoring in political science and the vice chair of Chatham LIGHT.
Chatham LIGHT – an acronym for “Leadership through Innovation in Genocide and Human rights Teaching” – became a student-run club at the University last year. What they do centers around equity, inclusion, human rights, social justice, and other topics.
That painting gathering, a collaboration between Chatham LIGHT and the Positive Painting Project, an O’Hara-based nonprofit centered on improving mental health through art, invited students to put positive messages and vibes on canvas. It’s just one example of the work Chatham LIGHT does to make a positive impact on campus. Screen prints of those paintings will be placed around campus in the coming weeks.
Rachel Coleman ’26, is the chair of the club, and she first heard of the LIGHT Education Initiative from Nicholas Haberman, the founder and director of the organization and one of Coleman’s teachers at Shaler Area High School. (Haberman was named the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh’s “Holocaust Educator of the Year” in 2018.)
LIGHT is primarily involved with bringing human rights and genocide education into K-12 schools, but Coleman had the idea to bring it to Chatham’s campus in the form of a club.
While the K-12 program is structured for classroom participation, Chatham LIGHT Club’s programming is more fluid and more accessible to potential members, who only have to show up to one event per year, Coleman said.
“Some people’s schedules are so busy, they don’t even have time to go to consistent meetings,” Coleman said. “We don’t even have club meetings, because we tried to, and people just weren’t interested in that.”
Club gatherings to which the whole campus community was invited led to significantly more participation; Coleman estimated they now have 60-65 active members.
Baker and Anna Betar ’25, the latter of whom is Chatham LIGHT’s communications officer, work alongside Coleman to help the club pull off their programming.
Coleman said she and her fellow officers are guided by two main goals: to help student projects that make a positive change on campus, and to host events that are accessible to Chatham students.
Other upcoming events from the club include a creative crafts night for stress relief, organized group tours of the Holocaust Center’s “Revolving Doors” exhibit in Jennie King Mellon Library, and a drive that was initiated by one of their members. Dates for these programs haven’t been announced yet.
And Chatham LIGHT is always looking for new ideas from individuals and organizations on campus, Betar said. “Partnering with people is a big thing that drives us.”
“That sense of collaboration isn’t always felt in student clubs,” Baker added.
Coleman agreed: “I feel like Chatham students always have great ideas.”
Connect with Chatham LIGHT on their Instagram @chathamu_light or by submitting an idea for a project.
Mick Stinelli is a Writer and Digital Content Specialist at Chatham University. His writing has previously appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and 90.5 WESA.