AUGUST 28, 2017 | VOLUME 108 | ISSUE 13
THE PITT NEWS
Chancellor Ghallager watches as first-year students participate in the 97th annual Latern Night . Kyleen Considine | Visual Editor
Lanterns light the way for legacies Janine Faust and Rachel Glasser community gathered at Heinz Chapel News Editors Alka Patel, alumna and keynote speaker at Pitt’s lantern night ceremony, said she was sure the young women in the audience were feeling a number of emotions — excitement, nervousness and maybe even a little bit of fear. “Or perhaps that’s just the mothers in the room,” she said with a laugh. More than 1,200 members of the Pitt
for the University’s 97th annual Lantern Night ceremony Sunday evening. Among them were hundreds of first-year women and their mothers, grandmothers, sisters and other female relatives who had preceded them at Pitt. At the event, these alumnae served as flame bearers, passing along the “light of learning” by lighting the lanterns given to the new women on campus. The young women who filed into
Heinz Chapel and the tent outside it were met by the smiles of Pitt alumnae glowing softly in the light of their candles. One such flame bearer was Nancy Allen Wood — a woman who, like her mother, graduated from Pitt’s School of Nursing. She was at the event to light the lantern of her daughter Laurel — the third person in their family to attend Pitt. “Pitt’s a wonderful school, so I was very happy that she chose to come here after me and her grandmother, especially
with all the changes that have been made,” Wood said. Lantern Night dates back to 1920 and is Pitt’s oldest tradition. It began as a welcoming ceremony for women new to the University. In the tradition’s early years, first-year women were invited into the secretary of the University’s home, where they would each receive a candle to signify the beginning of their highereducation journey. See Latern Night on page 4