A few years ago, Penn men's track coach Charlie Powell was ushering Arkansas track coach John McDonnell through Weightman Hall to the press room. A security guard stopped them and said that McDonnell wasn't allowed past. "His team just won the distance medley, and I'm taking him to the press room," Powell explained.

It's time to give this city some control over its own gun laws. Mayor Nutter and the City Council recently passed tougher firearms restrictions designed to fight Philadelphia's homicide problem. But thanks to a 1974 state law, Nutter's new gun law policies are probably unconstitutional, because only the state legislature has the right to regulate firearms.

Robbery April 12 - A female unaffiliated with the University reported that while walking within a building on the 3400 block of Market St., an unknown suspect forcibly removed her pocketbook and fled the scene, at about 6:30 p.m. Assault April 12 - Jason China, 26, of the 1700 block of 19th St.

"Vote today!" So shouted a student in a "Barack the Vote" shirt outside Hill College House yesterday, reminding students to vote in the highly-anticipated Pennsylvania primary. But despite the Illinois senator's strong grassroots campaign in Philadelphia and enthusiasm from young voters - 72 percent of voting Penn students chose Obama - that widespread activism wasn't enough yesterday, as New York Sen.

Penn students turned out in record numbers to vote in the Pennsylvania primary yesterday, in order to cast ballots in the pivotal contest between Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination. Altogether, about 2,500 students, more than one-fifth of Penn's student body, voted in this year's election - a significant jump from the 2006 midterm elections, when about 1,500 students voted in the general election.

The overall growth of applications from international graduate students has steadily declined over the last three years, according to a report released April 18 by the Council of Graduate Schools. Despite overall national decrease, 62 percent of the schools surveyed - including Penn - reported an average increase of 9 percent.

While many Penn students juggle academics, extracurricular activities and a social life, there is still one thing left for many to learn to balance - a checkbook. With the importance of financial literacy - knowledge of how to manage a credit-card to how to create a budget, for example - growing each and every year, trend-setting colleges all over the nation are reaching out to their students and expanding the financial advising resources available to them.

Sen. Hillary Clinton's victory in the Pennsylvania primary election last night came as little surprise to many on campus. Still, supporters of her opponent, Sen. Barack Obama, said they don't feel defeated. In fact, many said they anticipate that Obama will still win the Democratic presidential nomination and expressed plans to campaign for Obama leading up to next month's primaries in Indiana and North Carolina.

Trailing first-place Columbia by 4.5 games with five Ivy contests to go, Penn knows that this weekend's two doubleheaders against the Lions represent the team's final chance to repeat as Gehrig Division champs. "Season's not over," coach John Cole said. "We've got to put together a good week here and hopefully make a run.

It may have slipped under the radar, what with all the election news dominating the headlines - but at a little school to the north of here, a very different sort of controversy has been brewing. My friends at Yale haven't been talking Barack vs. Hillary.

Professor Dan Bogen loves children's toys - designing them, that is. Bogen, an associate professor of Bioengineering since 1982, started a program called PennToys as a project for his Bioengineering Senior Design students. For more than 14 years, students involved with PennToys have designed devices so medical researches and therapists can use them to help diagnose and treat disabled children.

Penn is helping Philadelphia's top officials to become better leaders. Two weeks ago, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter's senior administrators assembled at the Steinberg Conference Center on Thursday and Friday to participate in the University's executive education program, a two-day institute program to develop leadership and management skills.

Jason Pinsky's team is 3-4 in the Ivy League. A losing record, for a change. But he was in the mood for introspection. "I've been doing this for three years now. That's what I've based my whole career on - being solid, winning matches. Creating a legacy, which I feel I've done.

COLLEGE PARK, MD. - You can't score if you don't shoot. Or, in the case of the men's lacrosse team, you can't score even if you do shoot. The Quakers followed up terrible shooting performances against Princeton and Brown with another one at Maryland. They lost all three games by a combined 31-14 score.

The Ivy League as a whole is moving toward gender-neutral housing with Yale University's recent consideration of the policy. Penn has offered gender-neutral housing since fall 2005, after a gay male student who wanted to live with his female best friend raised the issue.

The chants at Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's rally at the Palestra last night were not all that different from those at Barack Obama's Philadelphia rally last Friday. But instead of saying "Yes We Can," the crowd in the stands cheered, "Yes She Can.

Although nearly two-thirds of Penn students are registered to vote in Pennsylvania, members of the third who won't go to the polls today say they don't mind the political frenzy that has overtaken the state over the last seven weeks. "It's actually really exhilarating," said College freshman Jenna Stahl, who voted in Ohio's Democratic primary.