Andrew Stettler

It was snowing when the white Cabrini van carrying President Marie George and a group of students and staff pulled up to the mansion. The group has spent the past week in much warmer weather in Guatemala to experience Cabrini's partnerships and extreme poverty first hand.

Studies show that this year, more than ever, college students are involved in working to solve social, political and world issues. Many Cabrini students over the past year have exemplified this trend through both academic and personal projects. Bridget Flynn, senior special education and elementary education major, spent this past summer in Ethiopia with Catholic Relief Services as part of the Nike Foundation's girl's empowerment program.

In order to save the student-loan market, the U.S. Education Department announced recently that it would temporarily pay lenders a higher subsidy rate on loans issued through the guaranteed student-loan program since 2000. This move will allow banks to raise their subsidy rates and will stop banks from dropping out of the market.

When Israeli armed forces blocked reporters from entering the Gaza Strip, the blogosphere became the main source of news from the war zone. Since outside reporters could not report from inside Gaza, bloggers were the ones providing much of the detailed information about the impact on actual citizens.

Cabrini College recently became one of 12 colleges awarded the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Research Initiative. The grant will give almost $1 million per year and allow the science department to begin a new research- based curriculum aimed toward incoming freshmen students, both science and non-science majors.

Less than one week after President Marie George announced a plan for Justice Matters, the new Cabrini core curriculum aimed to encourage students to work for a more "just world," she joined ECG 100 "Our Interdependent World," for a video conference reaching out to a Guatemalan Fair Trade cooperative.

Each year, millions of people around the world are trafficked into slavery and prostitution; 175,000 reaching the United States. Many of these people are children between the ages of 17 and 19 who are misled and forced into becoming sex slaves or labor workers.