If you believe campus brochures, attending class at Penn is something of a transcendent experience. Wide-eyed students utilize their diverse backgrounds to spar intellectually while a charismatic professor imbues his pupils with the "practical knowledge" they need to become leaders of tomorrow.

I think it started over the summer. Slowly but surely, e-mails I was getting from my friends started looking a little different. Nothing big, just a tagline at the bottom: "Sent from my Verizon wireless Blackberry." Before, I'd only really seen it on e-mails from my dad and a few high-powered professors.

By the end of the month, laundry-service provider Mac-Gray Corporation will have finished installing the last loads of brand-new machines in all college houses.

About 100 alumni rekindled their Penn pride at the annual First September event of the Penn Alumni Club of Philadelphia, held last night at the Triumph Brewing Company in Old City.

"In extraordinary times, there are no ordinary lives." So reads the tagline of noted documentary filmmaker Ken Burns' new production, The War, for which there was a preview screening and panel discussion last night in College Hall. Modern European History professor Ronald Granieri, Classics professor Peter Struck and Tom Childers, who previously viewed the entire film and interviewed Burns, comprised the panel.

Going back to my freshman year, Penn has played Villanova three times each in football and basketball. Those six meetings all have two things in common: They were all played here on Penn's campus, and they were all Wildcats victories. That's right; six big, fat losses, right in our own backyard.

Noisy jack-hammering on Locust Walk should come to an end today as University officials move into the next stage of renovations of the 38th Street pedestrian bridge. The reconstruction, which has included loud drilling since last week, is part of a $128,000 effort by the University to spruce up the campus for Homecoming.

WILMINGTON, Del. - Through two expert analysts and one witness, Delaware prosecutors yesterday attempted to place Wharton undergraduate Irina Malinovskaya in the vicinity of the scene of Irina Zlotnikov's murder. Malinovskaya is facing her third trial for allegedly bludgeoning Zlotnikov to death on Dec.

Joe Sandberg is out for now. The senior tailback hasn't yet shaken the stiffness out of his leg, and his status for Saturday's game against Villanova is "doubtful."

Joanne Tong is a Wharton senior from Manila, Philippines. Her e-mail address is tong@dailypennsylvanian.com.

When it began in 2000, SEPTA's Market Street Elevated Reconstruction Project, an effort to replace 11,000 feet of elevated subway on the Market-Frankford Line, seemed to be on the right track.

The school year has barely started, but the Recording Industry Association of America hasn't wasted any time continuing its legal onslaught against students.

They've been heating up halftimes at the Palestra since 2001. But the Quaker Girls dance team has one request: Please don't confuse them with the cheerleading squad.

64 freshmen candidates are vying for 74 student government-related positions for this academic year. They gathered last night in Logan Hall to confirm their candidacy with the Nominations and Elections Committee. Ten of the candidates are especially ambitious, running for both an Undergraduate Assembly seat and a position on the Class Board.

Forget Poe and Shakespeare - Tom Murtha prefers potatoes to poetry and soybeans to soliloquies. Murtha, a former College student, turned in his textbooks for tractors eight years ago when he set out to farm his way across the country. An English major slated to graduate in 1995, Murtha spent harvesting seasons in Connecticut, Oregon, Delaware and New Jersey before settling down on his own plot of land in Upper Bucks County, Pennsylvania, not too far from his (almost) alma mater.

Theft Sept. 13 - A male student reported that an unknown suspect removed items from his unsecured room at Rodin College House, located at 3901 Locust Walk, at about 4:30 p.m. Sept. 13 - A female employee reported that she placed her pocket book unsecured on a bench on the 300 block of 40th Street at about 2:05 a.

WILMINGTON, Del. - Defense lawyers made a surprise move yesterday when they chose not to cross-examine Robert Bondar following the conclusion of his testimony in the case against his ex-girlfriend and Wharton undergraduate Irina Malinovskaya. Unlike the two previous trials, in which the defense grilled Bondar in one of the more crucial moments of the proceedings, attorney Joe Hurley said he would instead call Bondar back to the stand as a defense witness later in the trial.