The road to the Ivy League title was always destined to go through the Palestra. But for the first time this year, one of its main challengers actually will. Cornell, a half game out of the Ivy League lead, will make its annual trip to Philadelphia with its season in the balance.

If it was at all apprehensive about its upcoming weekend match against a nationally ranked team, the Penn women's tennis team failed to show it. "This is a team we always look forward to playing. They're tough," captain Julia Koulbitskaya said about No. 14 Virginia Commonwealth.

Preceptorial facts To the Editor: In his recent blog entry, Stephen Morse manipulated several points of our e-mail interview and inaccurately represented preceptorials. The Preceptorials Committee would like to clarify the following points of fact: 1) Cancellations are extremely rare in the current preceptorials system.

When Columbia takes the floor tonight at the Palestra, it will be clear to even the casual basketball fan who its anchors are. This is a squad that runs through its big men.

Turning Drew Gilpin Faust into a symbol gives the public no choice but to question her actual qualifications.

Multiple false fire alarms in Hill College House lead students to fall into the dangerous practice of ignoring them.

If the Penn wrestling team is going to make a move, it will have to be soon. A week after being soundly defeated by Cornell and then losing a disappointing match to Columbia, the Quakers will try to turn it around this weekend with three scheduled matches.

President Bush's plan to increase the amount of financial-aid grants seemed to be a step forward in improving the availability of federal funding for students. But education groups say the plan may actually end up doing more harm than good by cutting other programs in the process.

500Talking deodorizers put in men's restrooms across New Mexico that tell patrons not to drink and drive. Source: Reuters

To quote Frank Sinatra, the Quakers will "try to make a brand new start of it in old New York this weekend." One week after being shellacked by both Harvard and Dartmouth, the womnen's basketball team (8-12, 3-4 Ivy) will look to rebound and regain ground in the Ivy League.

From attending crush parties to throwing charity events, participating in Greek life can certainly take up a chunk of time. But that's not stopping many participants from maintaining high grade-point averages - some even higher than non-Greek members. More than half of the Greek organizations on campus maintain GPAs higher than the undergraduate average, said Scott Reikofski, director of the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Affairs.

Not all of a professor's students go on to earn the title Secretary General of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, but one of David Silverman's did. Twenty years after graduating from Penn with a Ph.D. in Egyptology, noted archaeologist Zahi Hawass is showing his gratitude to his former professor by insisting that Silverman take an important role in "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs," now showing at the Franklin Institute.

Coming into the weekend, Penn, Cornell and Yale were within a half a game of each other in the Ivy title race, but the Quakers made sure that didn't last. Against a Big Red squad that was a whole lot tougher than most Penn fans would have thought, the Quakers eked out an 83-71 win that was closer than the score might indicate.

Abdi Farah is a College sophomore from Owings Mills, Md. His e-mail address is abdm@sas.upenn.edu.

Pennsylvania's biotechnology industry may soon receive a revitalizing shot in the arm this year. And, University officials hope, that will mean something extra for Penn as well. Beginning next month, the legislature will consider lowering taxes for the industry, giving firms more room for experimentation and changing funding levels for research, said Dennis Flynn, president of Pennsylvania Bio, a trade group representing the biosciences industry.

With a thrilling win over Yale last weekend, Cornell actually bumped Penn into first place in the Ivy League, giving the Quakers control of their own destiny. On Saturday, the Big Red (13-9, 6-2 Ivy) will attempt to steal the conference's top spot and undo what it did for Penn (15-8, 6-1 Ivy) a week ago.

The fire that gutted a house located at 210 S. 41st St. on Jan. 27 was deliberately set, Philadelphia Fire Department Executive Chief Daniel Williams said yesterday.