Pax Club, a group centered around peace, ceased activities during 2016-17 due to changes in the student body and the graduation of leaders, leaving no remaining students to take over the club. Now, it’s returning with a new temporary name — Peace Club.

What started as an idea earlier in the year, the Peace Club gained momentum, and aims to become an official  organization on campus once again in the spring semester.

Interest began with Mackenzie Miller, a junior communication major, who initially considered starting a peace club on campus after attending the Intercollegiate Peace Fellowship conference (ICPF) at Eastern Mennonite University in February of 2025.

Miller said that attending the conference as the only person representing Goshen College made her feel like a group focused on peace was missing on campus. “Goshen is such a peace and justice-oriented college, so why don’t we have a peace club that would be represented in this space?”  She said.

Miller continued thinking about creating a new club; she approached some of her friends and peers to see if they would be interested in joining as leaders to make it happen. The current leadership includes first years Dahlia Thut and Rose Snyder, Emma King, a sophomore and Ben Koop, a junior. Breanna Nickel, associate professor of Bible and religion, serves as the club adviser.

The club hosted an open forum last Thursday to gather student perspectives on what the peace club should do and what they would like to see happen so more students on campus can participate.

Anton Alstrom-Brookhyser, a sophomore music education major, was one of the students who attended the forum. “Peace and justice is about awareness, so having a campus that’s aware of what’s going on, no matter what level of involvement you want to be at, just knowing that people are fighting for peace by having the peace club as a platform for awareness is really useful,” said Alstrom-Brookhyser.

Snyder was asked by Miller to join due to her involvement in the No Kings protest. “We’re hoping to have students who are involved with activism and to make a peaceful community by raising awareness about issues in our community,” said Snyder. “We’re hoping to attend ICPF this upcoming February, which is taking place at EMU…I think it would be really cool to collaborate with other Mennonite colleges and peace clubs.”

Nickel used to be part of the Pax Club when she was a student. She said that having a group focused on peace was a good way for students to be activists outside of their other responsibilities. “Pax Club used to be one of those platforms that students could figure out how to use the social power and vocal power that they have,” said Nickel.

Alstrom-Brookhyser described the new club as a way to make peace more accessible to students using  the example of Israel and Palestine. “This is horrible, tragic, so many deaths and brutality and violence, what can I do?” he said, “I’m just a college student living in Northern Indiana, and it feels out of reach.”

“Peace is more than non-violence, it’s having harmony among all groups despite differences and being able to learn from those differences to better understand each other,” said Snyder.

Nickel supports what the students are aiming to do with this club. She said that as much as the faculty is willing to help as much as they can, having students take leadership allows for these conversations to start happening outside of the classroom. “Some of the things the leaders are doing are to be really deliberate, but also persistent and committed to the idea that students can be active and should be active,” she said.

Snyder believes that as a Mennonite college, there should be peace practices on campus and with this club, that would emphasized even more. “I think it would be nice to have just a Goshen group that sort of stands for activism,” said Snyder.

“I’m hoping to host an ICPF conference in Goshen next fall,” said Miller. She mentioned that the premise of this conference would focus on inviting other Mennonite colleges for one weekend and have peace tasks, similar to the C. Henry Smith Peace Oratorical contest that is held in the spring.

“I think that would go really well with the ICPF conference, and we really want these conferences to be individual and representative of the host college,” she said. “I think it’s a very Goshen way to invite people in and start having these conversations and learning from our peers.”