NEW HAVEN, Conn., Feb. 14 - The magic surrounding Penn basketball hasn't been what it once was. But as a youthful team that has dealt with more than its fair share of struggles and setbacks, the Quakers will settle for a slightly humbler existence - one as world-class escape artists.

Heading into the season ranked No. 2, the women's squash team had its eyes on returning to the finals of the Howe Cup with dreams of winning the national championship. Unfortunately for the Quakers, they failed to reach that goal this weekend. Although Penn won 8-1 over Cornell in the first round, its run was stopped by Harvard in the semifinals Saturday in Cambridge, Mass.

There is no conference championship tournament in the Ivy League, but this weekend's ECAC Men's Tennis Championships - in which fourth-seeded Penn will take on fifth-seeded Cornell in the first round - sure seems like one. The 2009 version of the annual tournament, which will take place at Harvard's Murr Center today through Sunday, has an Ivy League flavor, with the entire Ancient Eight among the 10 teams invited.

The Student Activities Council General Body will vote Feb. 18 on whether to fund Penn's Athletes and Allies Tackling Homophobia. The SAC Executive Council voted last week to recommend PATH as a newly recognized syndicate. According to College junior and SAC Chairwoman Natalie Vernon, the General Body agrees with the recommendation "99 percent of the time.

Student Health Services announced today that all three students hospitalized with meningococcal infections are making significant improvements and are recovering. Two more students were hospitalized with flu-like symptoms, though they are not critically ill and have not been confirmed to have a meningococcal infection.

Daniel Schwartz is an College sophomore from Decatur, Ga. His e-mail address is schwartz@dailypennsylvanian.com.

Men's basketball blew out the woeful Brown Bears in Providence, R.I., tonight by a score of 73-52. Brown kept it close in the first frame, battling to a 21-21 tie with 7:04 left in the half, but a rare Brennan Votel three-pointer set the Quakers on a 9-0 run that also featured a Cam Lewis slam and lay-up.

Updated Feb. 14, 6:54 p.m. About 2,000 people -- a quarter of the undergraduate student body -- have received prophylactic medication so far after a third Penn student was hospitalized for a meningococcal infection, according to University spokeswoman Phyllis Holtzman. The third student is still in critical condition today. Holtzman said no new cases were reported Saturday.

Vengeance will be on the minds of the women's squash players when they step on the court this weekend. The nation's top college squash teams will convene in Cambridge, Mass., today through Sunday for the 2009 Howe Cup. It's also the Quakers' one last shot at redemption.

By JOE SANFILIPPO Staff Writer sanfilippo@dailypennsylvanian.com The men's squash team is looking for some love this Valentine's Day - nothing tawdry, just a win to close out the regular season. No. 7 Penn (7-5, 2-4 Ivy) heads to Rochester Saturday for a midday match with the up-and-coming Yellowjackets (9-5), currently No.

Behind senior captain Carrie Biemer's 28 points and third double-double of the year, the Penn women's basketball team took home its second straight Ivy League victory with a 66-49 win over Brown. The Quakers used an 18-2 run over eight and a half minutes in the first half to take a commanding lead.

This week on Locust Walk, "vagina" is the new "register to vote." As part of a week-long campaign to eliminate a taboo and promote the play, members of The Vagina Monologues have been inundating passersby with the word "vagina" from their table outside the Penn Women's Center.

Starting next month, a few more squirrels will call Penn home. The Penn Art Club will be placing between 20 and 25 larger-than-life squirrel statues on Locust Walk and College Green between March 16 and April 19. The group is following in the footsteps of cities like Chicago, New York and Los Angeles which in the past have featured cows, angels or other figures decorated by prominent artists.

When it comes down to it, we respect and follow the leaders we feel we personally know best. So really, that's rarely Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton or Tiger Woods. Instead, the leaders we tend to emulate are those we directly interact with. One of those leaders is Nicholas Kristof, the New York Times columnist who travels all over the world to report on the world's most heinous crimes against humanity.

Valentine's Day in New Haven. This Penn team just can't catch a break. But after a historically bad weekend in Philadelphia - in which the Quakers endured their first Ivy League weekend sweep at home since 1968 - Yale's cozy John J. Lee Amphitheater might not be as bad as it seems.

The University of Pennsylvania Press received a grant of $1.16 million from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation last week. The money will go toward publishing scholarly books on literatures of the non-Anglophone world. Penn Press will share the grant with Fordham University Press, University of California Press, University of Virginia Press and University of Washington Press.