After being picked to finish dead last in the Ivy League in Baseball America's preseason poll, the Quakers felt they had a lot to show to an audience that was convinced Penn wouldn't improve from last season. But if any doubts remained about the team's talent, they should be silenced after this weekend.

Penn saw seven years of frustration erased this weekend. The women's rowing team breezed past their competition, winning all five races on Saturday and both trophies in the Class of '89 Plate. The team traveled to New Brunswick, N.J. to compete against Rutgers and Cornell.

When you've got a problem in Philadelphia, who you gonna call? Why, Bob Brady, of course. This mayoral candidate has made a career out of bringing people together and ending disputes between competing groups, first as the local Democratic Party chairman and then as the congressman representing Pennsylvania's first congressional district.

Rare poetry recordings of Ezra Pound are now available for download on PennSound, the University-wide archive of Mp3 poetry sound files. Files from Pound - an acclaimed poet - include previously unknown recordings that were made between 1962 and 1972. On the site, his work is complemented by a detailed essay by Richard Sieburth, an acclaimed translator and author.

For the second straight weekend, the Penn men's tennis team will be doing more than just facing Ivy League foes - it will be trying to erase the past. With their victory over Brown last Saturday, the Quakers avenged the loss that kept them out of last year's NCAA Tournament.

Annie Kinsey hasn't always been the leadoff woman for the Penn softball team. But she'll find herself in the No. 1 position when Cornell (26-7, 7-1 Ivy) visits Warren Field for two doubleheaders this weekend. After moving up from the No. 3 slot last year, Kinsey has experienced success in her new role.

Other schools should follow Penn's lead when it comes to implementing gender-neutral placement in dorms.

No one on the women's tennis team knows what it feels like to beat Harvard. But the Quakers are hoping to change that by the time they fly back from New England on Saturday night. Penn's critical weekend starts on Friday at Harvard (3-12, 1-1) before they travel to Hanover to take on Dartmouth (8-7, 0-2) Saturday.

Daniel Schwartz is a College freshman from Decatur, Ga. His e-mail address is schwarm@sas.upenn.edu.

With trendy packaging and funky flavors, Anheuser-Busch is unfairly marketing to a too-young-to-drink demographic.

At 2-3 with one Ivy League game to play, the men's lacrosse team is out of title contention. And at 5-5, the possibility of an NCAA Tournament bid is getting dimmer and dimmer. "We talked about it [yesterday] after practice, we just want to go out with some pride," sophomore attacker Craig Andrzejewski said.

Two sexual assaults occurred last week on campus for which the attackers will not be prosecuted, and Division of Public Safety officials say these cases show the dilemma they often face in proceeding with incidents of sexual assault. In both incidents, the victim knew her attacker and reported the crime to Penn Police but ultimately decided not to prosecute.

Next year, stipends for graduate students in the School of Arts and Sciences will increase from $18,000 to $18,300. But some students are saying that this increase is too small, and that the University should be doing more to fund graduate education. Members of Graduate Employees Together -University of Pennsylvania, a graduate student group that advocates for teaching and research assistants, say the $300 increase is not enough to match inflation and projected cost of living increases in Philadelphia.

According to General Motors executive Larry Burns, it may take "changing the DNA" of cars to solve the environmental problems of the automobile industry. Burns, GM's vice president of research & development and strategic panning, discussed goals for the future of GM and the automobile industry yesterday evening before an audience of a few dozen Engineering students and professors at Levine Hall.

Fighting stigma To the Editor: I am writing this letter in response to the hateful 34th Street shoutout directed at my mental illness. The shoutout attacked me for having bipolar disorder and commanded me to go to the "nuthouse." This is hate speech. 34th Street would never have been comfortable printing an equivalent shoutout attacking someone for being gay or black, and the fact that this made the cut is a serious problem.

There are only four teams in the Gehrig Division of the Ivy League. Yet Penn has not finished with even a share of first since Mark DeRosa's senior season ten years ago. Sole possession has eluded them for even longer. The Quakers (13-14, 7-5 Ivy) can take a huge step towards erasing that futility this weekend when they take on first-place Cornell (12-14, 5-3).

Both the Penn men's and women's track teams will be in action this weekend, but the teams will only share one thing in common. And if it's not the venue, the objective or the opponents then what is it? The weather. Both teams are hoping that good old Mother Nature can give them a good weekend in order perform at their highest levels.