Last fall, College senior Jesse Benton was searching for housing. He realized he had two options: save money by living further away from campus, or splurge for a spacious apartment closer to school. Benton, like many other Penn students, decided the possible dent in his wallet was more important than added luxury, and he chose to live in an apartment near 42nd and Chestnut streets.

At Harrison College House, blank walls offer a world of opportunity. At least for students like College senior Shelby Prindaville who are being asked to liven up the building's interior with original art.

What would you do with $128,990? Student Activities Council board members could give the money to help improve student groups- - if only they could get their hands back on it. Each year, SAC, a branch of student government, is given $700,000 with which to fund and supervise about 200 students.

Neither a shoulder injury nor opponents' defenses can keep sprint football quarterback Mike D'Angelo out of the endzone. With a contusion or possible ligament damage in his shoulder, last week's Collegiate Sprint Football Offensive Player of the Week continued his onslaught in a victory over Cornell on Saturday.

Ira Harkavy, the founder and head of the newly renamed Barbara and Edward Netter Center for Community Partnerships, has ten million new reasons to be happy. Earlier this month, CCP received a $10 million donation from its new namesakes, Edward Netter, a 1953 College alumnus, and his wife, Barbara.

Planning is in the air. With Penn's plan for the east-campus expansion, the Centennial District plan in Parkside, a score of community-based plans by neighborhood organizations across the city and PennPraxis' work along the central Delaware, planning in Philadelphia seems to be experiencing a renaissance.

If you have to lose a Joe, it's nice to have a DiMaggio waiting in the wings. With senior running back Joe Sandberg relegated to the sideline at times this season - with an injury, or simply for some in-game rest - Quakers fans have been given a glimpse of a Penn backfield without its established star.

Six thousand feet above sea level, on the flanks of the Peruvian Andes, a remote community of organic coffee farmers still follow the ancient Incan philosophy of Ayni. But this week, soft-spoken farmer Beltran Leguiacutea Masias is experiencing Ayni on a far broader scale: meeting the people who buy his coffee from Fair Trade shops across the world, in Philadelphia.

The Penn baseball team may have the Phillies' infield of the future. No, Quakers coach John Cole is not grooming Steve Gable and William Gordon to replace Chase Utley and Jimmy Rollins. But Meiklejohn Stadium received a grooming of its own this off-season, and the Phillies have shown particular interest in the new surface.

Out in the flyover, we don't get a lot of coastal news. Growing up in suburban Milwaukee, all I knew about Philadelphia until I was eight or nine was that it had been home to both the Fresh Prince and Ben Franklin. I've since become more enlightened, but it's ironic that I ended up at Penn, the Philadelphia institution that, more than any other, walks the line between these two worlds.

Penn's strategy for raising the remainder of the money for its $3.5 billion capital campaign is fairly standard, experts say. Although finance consultants vary on how much a university should raise during the quiet phase, they generally agree that Penn was ready to take the next step in the campaign.

Amira Fawcett is a Engineering junior from Houston. Her e-mail address is fawcett@dailypennsylvanian.com.

The second-degree murder charge for Wharton undergraduate Irina Malinovskaya should be dropped, the defense argued yesterday, in light of the circumstances surrounding the 2004 bludgeoning of Temple University graduate student Irina Zlotnikov. Defense attorney Eugene Maurer brought a motion asking Judge James Vaughn to forbid the jury from considering the charge because the murder must have been premeditated, which would only leave first-degree murder as an option.

Just as applicants to Penn come from all over the world, people interested in Penn admissions are everywhere, too. And so, without a real watercolor to gossip over, they turn to an online one. Since his departure from Penn, blogs and Internet forums have been sustaining interest and driving conversation about former Dean of Admissions Lee Stetson.

Finance or Fine Arts? Economics or English? Successful alumni say, "Go with what you like. Five years down the road, it's not going to matter anyway." A College Alumni Mentoring Series panel discussed the impact a liberal-arts education has on one's career yesterday.