Jimmy Tobias

Student activism may not be dead. Last Friday, about 30 student and local activists staged an occupation at a buidling slated for demolition at The New School in New York City. The protest followed a similar lock-in at The New School in December, a student occupation at NYU in February and the many meetings and rallies that accompanied them.

On March 13, three Penn students associated with the Student Labor Action Project returned early from spring break to attend their much-anticipated meeting with Executive Vice President Craig Carnaroli and an executive from HEI, a hotel-management corporation with ties to the University.

In economic and business classes across campus, students learn about labor as an abstraction, as a commodity, as something to be traded on the market. But for Peter Ho and three other hotel workers who spoke last week with a group of students, faculty and staff, labor is deeply personal.

In Philadelphia, poverty often means death. At last count, more than 90 homeless men and women - a group that represents some of Philadelphia's most marginalized citizens - died on the streets in 2008. They died of exposure. disease and a lack of both service and support.

As Gaza burned and violence by Hamas and the Israeli Defense Force added to the mounting death toll of the current conflict in the Middle East, Penn students gathered on Locust Walk and College Green yesterday in protest, solidarity or both. They carried signs: "End the Genocide in Gaza"; "Israel We Stand with You"; "Zionism=Racism"; "Free the Palestinians from Hamas.

When he was 13 years old, David Helfenbein fell head-over-heels in love - political love, that is - with Hillary Clinton. It all began on a fateful day eight years ago when Clinton came to speak at the now-College senior's middle school in Chappaqua, New York.

Don't let anyone tell you student activism is dead. Students involved in last week's victory for AlliedBarton security guards at Temple would say they proved the contrary. The security company granted its Temple guards up to three days' paid sick leave after coming under pressure from a coalition of its employees, Temple students and local activists.

In its continual effort to keep young talent in Philadelphia, city officials are turning to an unlikely source this weekend - hip-hop star Talib Kweli. This Saturday, Campus Philly is hosting its annual kick-off event at the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, with live performances by Kweli and other artists and free access for college students to 11 museums across the city.

West Philadelphia resident Latisha Turnage needed help. At 26, she had no job, no house, no education and no prospects. Her mother Tracy told her to go to a small office building at 61st Street and Osage Avenue, the local home of National Student Partnerships .

The management of El Azteca was fed up with the vomit, the dining and dashing and the missing sombreros - all symptoms of having a drunken, college-age clientele. So the famous -or perhaps notorious - margarita-making restaurant at 7th and Chestnut streets took action last December.