If there were ever a time when one person could impact an entire weekend of softball, this was it. Quakers freshman pitcher Jessie Lupardus left her mark on the weekend as Penn hosted a pair of doubleheaders against Yale and Brown. Going in with the lowest earned run average in all of Division-I softball (0.

After 35 hours of discussions and debate this past weekend, the Student Activities Council is increasing its funding for student groups. For the first time since 2000, SAC has updated its funding policies and guidelines in time for its annual budget allocations process for the 2008-2009 school year.

The defending Ivy League champion women's tennis took the first step in re-asserting itself atop the Ancient Eight on Saturday. The No. 72 Quakers used a complete team effort - each woman who played won at least one match, either in singles or doubles - to knock off No.

They used to hold parties in the basement of the ARCH, plastering newspapers over the windows to protect the anonymity of the attendees. But for the current Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual Transgender community on campus, these carefully guarded gatherings are a thing of the past.

Films at this year's Greater Philadelphia Student Film Festival ranged from the frivolous and fun ballad of a hot air balloon spy to the weighty and grave story of a transsexual Drexel student switching genders. About 540 people attended the third-annual festival last Friday, where students from Penn, Drexel and University of the Arts took away the majority of the awards.

Harvard Law School is easing the burden of taking public service jobs with a new tuition plan, a move experts and students applaud but say could go further. Under the new plan, the law school will pay the third year of tuition for future students who commit to work in public service for five years following graduation, Harvard Law School Dean Elena Kagan announced last week.

Unlike Little League baseball, there's no 10-goal mercy rule in women's lacrosse. But if there were, Saturday's matchup between Penn and Columbia would've ended well before 60 minutes were up: The Lions were thoroughly thrashed, 13-2. That gave the Quakers reason to cheer when they lined up in front of a sparsely populated grandstand to sing their rendition of "The Red and the Blue" after the game.

As the Philadelphia School District discusses a partnership with Penn and Drexel, University officials need to take the community's needs into account. The plan would involve the transformation of University City High into a combination neighborhood-and-magnet school.

Today marks the beginning of SCUE's annual Education Week. For two decades, students have used this week as a time to reflect beyond requirements and recruiting, deciding for themselves what it means to be an active learner at Penn. During a semester in France, I saw my classmates physically barricade their university for four weeks: occupying the buildings, shutting down debate and scuffling with riot police to show their dissatisfaction with the government's university reform proposal.

For some, April Fools' Day has come early -- despite the "Obama" eggs scattered around campus and the flyers posted on Locust Walk saying otherwise, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama will not be speaking at Irvine Auditorium tomorrow night.

PhillyCarShare has some competition. Zipcar, another car-sharing company, began service in Philadelphia last week. Zipcar will begin its service in Philadelphia with 110 cars located throughout University City, Center City and Queen Village. The company says it has more than 180,000 members in 50 cities throughout the United States, Canada and London.

Yesterday the main attraction at the Kelly Writers House was the cherry pie - and the pedophilia. From noon until well into the night, relentless staff members, professors, students and members of the community alike read aloud Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita in its entirety to a captive audience in the Arts Cafe.

Last summer, College sophomores Elena Stein and Bryant Williams visited Guatemala, armed with entrepreneurial drive and creativity, to learn how they could help the Hogar San Francisco Xavier orphanage become self-sustaining. The trip was part of a pilot project for Ties to the World, a nonprofit organization that helps Latin American orphanages become financially independent through the creation of social-entrepreneurial businesses.

Next time your parents ask you why they are paying so much money for you to sleep through your morning classes, tell them you woke up for an educational program at 8 a.m. on a Saturday. Tomorrow, Global Health Programs is sponsoring Global Health Career Day 2008 at the Biomedical Research Building of the School of Medicine.

Sometimes, good can come from tragedy - and the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania is trying to make that happen more often. In the last few years, HUP has made a concerted effort to raise its rate of organ donation. For the past two years, HUP's transplant program has received the Medal of Honor from the Department of Health and Human Services for having 75 percent of eligible donors do so.

If I'm not with them, I'm against them. A sidebar in the QPenn supplement on Monday labeled me a heterosexist for thinking that "LGBT people are too outspoken about LGBT rights." Ironically, this same sidebar implored readers to think of gay people as interesting people who exist beyond their sexuality.

Without a clear-cut favorite, Penn gymnastics' chance of winning is as good as anyone's. After finishing third in the Ivy League, the Quakers have a chance to win the conference. Tomorrow, they will compete in the Eastern College Athletic Conference Championships at William and Mary.