All change is historically placed. Therefore, all organizing must be historically informed. Throughout the rest of the guide, we try to give in depth looks at various issues with Penn and in Philadelphia. In this, we try to give a broad overview and timeline of what organizing and agitation efforts have taken place over the past year or so.
2025
August 25th: Penn Disorientation Guide
The 2025 issue of the Penn Disorientation Guide is published by a collective of student activists. The issue features articles highlighting Penn’s complicity in Israel’s genocide in Palestine, Penn’s ongoing harms in West Philadelphia, particularly displacement and violence against its residents, and Penn’s failure of its own students, faculty and staff, including the suppression of free speech and lack of support for vulnerable and marginalized communities. Following publication, the Disorientation Guide hosts a week of educational and social events in collaboration with other student organizations, including Penn Against the Occupation (PAO), Penn for Immigrant Rights (PIR), Graduate Employees Together – University of Pennsylvania (GET-UP), Jewish Voices for Peace (JVP), Koreans for Decolonization (K4D), and Penn Chavurah.
September 5th: Know Your Rights Training
Penn for Immigrant Rights (PIR) leads a Know Your Rights Training, informing community members what their legal rights are in interactions with federal agents, and providing resources and support.
October 1st: White House Compact
Trump sends a compact to nine universities, including Penn, that demands the universities make a series of reforms, or face the loss of federal funding.
The compact is met with immediate backlash from faculty and student groups, including AAUP, GET-UP, RAP-UP, the Undergraduate Assembly, and others. As a result of community pressure and protest, Penn refuses to sign the compact, although it is worth noting that in many other cases Penn admin have shamefully conformed to Trump’s demands.
October 2nd: PIR Film Screening
PIR hosts a screening of Expanding Sanctuary, a documentary film focused on immigrant rights organizing in Philadelphia. The film is followed by a discussion with the filmmaker and an activist from Juntos, a Philly-based immigrant rights organization.
October 6th: Racist Video Investigation
A video of two Penn students making racist remarks and using slurs is circulated widely on campus, meeting with condemnation from many student groups. UMOJA, the umbrella organization representing Black students and student groups at Penn, publishes a statement
demanding the university take action against the students who made these “terrorizing, dehumanizing, and blatantly savage remarks”. Penn opens an investigation and makes a statement calling the remarks “highly disturbing”, but does nothing further; neither of the students face any serious disciplinary consequences.
October 5th: Vigil for Azir Harris
A vigil is held for Azir Harris – son of Troy Harris, a Penn Kosher Chef at Hillel for over 25 years – by the Lotus Collective. Azir Harris was shot and killed that previous summer in a shooting in Grays Ferry. Lotus and its member’s relationship with Troy and Azir began in 2018 when Azir was shot for the first time and paralyzed. That relationship deepened in 2019 when Lotus worked with SLAP to advocate for better wages and working conditions for food workers. Lotus emphasizes that what “happened to [Azir] is not separate from our experience at Penn, and that shooting and his eventual death is all of our responsibilities. We at Penn are responsible for the poverty, violence and suffering in the city – meaning we are also capable of changing it.”
November 8th: Arrest of West Philly Kids by Penn Police
On a Saturday evening, several hundred middle and high schoolers from West Philadelphia gather around 40th and Market Street, in response to social media posts calling for a ‘meetup’. Penn Police surveil, harass and threaten the children, and attempt to disperse the crowds. Several fights break out as a result, and Penn Police arrest three youth, two for disorderly conduct and one for assaulting an officer. This is yet another instance of Penn Police employing wanton force and violence against Black and brown Philadelphians, whom Penn is also actively displacing.
2026
February 27th: GET-UP Contract Ratification
Following over a year of organizing, and narrowly avoiding a threatened strike, Penn’s graduate student union, Graduate Employees Together – University of Pennsylvania (GET-UP), votes to ratify its first contract with the university. The contract includes new provisions for paid holidays, paid leave, disability accommodations, and tuition remission. It also enhances provisions for child care and medical benefits, insurance, and support for international workers. The current contract expires in 2028; the union and administration will enter into negotiations in April of that year.
March 29th: UA ICE Resolution
The Undergraduate Assembly (UA) passes a resolution criticizing Penn’s lack of clarity and support for students surrounding potential ICE activity on campus, and demands that Penn “safeguard” student rights and establish clear protocols. For more information on how Penn has failed its international community, read our article Penn Vs. International Students.
Tuesday, March 31st: Open Expression Guidelines
Penn publishes a draft of revised Open Expression Guidelines, as the university has been operating under temporary Open Expression Guidelines since the 2024 Palestine Encampments. (see our article Crackdown: Open Expression in Post-Encampment Penn for more context on how the guidelines were a direct attempt to silence and repress students fighting for justice in Palestine).
Admin opens a public comment form and holds a “listening session” for students and faculty to give feedback. AAUP-Penn, a faculty org advocating for open expression and shared governance, stages a protest outside the listening session before it begins, educating and agitating passerbys.
No one who has decision making power on the open expression guidelines is present to listen to feedback. Instead, the faculty senate tri-chairs host and take meeting notes to be given to the president. This as well as the guidelines themselves are roundly criticised by all attendees. The guidelines as well as the farcical, undemocratic writing process time and again is called “unsalvageable” and needing a full start over. In response to decisive criticism, the administration agrees to restart the revision process again in the fall.
Friday, August 7th: GET-UP Legal Dispute
Penn is granted a declaratory judgement action, taking GET-UP to court in a dispute over whether or not first and second year biomedical graduate students are eligible for union representation. The university claims these students are solely engaged in academic activities and are not employees. GET-UP argues that these students are providing the same research services as other graduate employees, and that the university’s refusal to recognize them as employees is a denial of their contractual rights.
Penn Disorientation Guide 