Basketball is just a game for most, a hobby for some and a job for others. But for Penn's Anca Popovici and Drexel's Gabriela Marginean, basketball offered something more. It was a plane ticket to the U.S., a way to continue their educations and to represent their country.

After the online newspaper Inside HigherEd reported in January that Wharton MBA Admissions officer Judith Hodara was consulting for a Japanese admissions firm and also owned a consulting business catering to high-school students, observers and members of the higher-education community quickly labeled the activities as a conflict of interest.

'It Rhymes with Pumpkin!" "Getting down to business!" "The Asian Sensation!" With Student Government elections coming up, you are about to be bombarded with candidates' slogans. Chalked on the walk, hanging from trees, written on your friend's T-shirt, these catchy adages certainly vie for your eyes but also make it difficult to distinguish style from substance.

Penn isn't biased To the Editor: I must admit that I don't fully understand David Back's comment on free speech. If his concern is that Penn is politically biased in its choice of high-profile speakers, I would remind him that Karl Rove, Bill Clinton and Senator John McCain have all spoken this academic year.

Walking into the Penn Bookstore yesterday, I smiled to see the Campus Bestseller display. A prominent stripe of Stephen Colbert's I Am America (And So Can You!) ran across it, three books wide and ten books in length. Below them, I spotted several copies of Susan Jacoby's just-released The Age of American Unreason.

It is often said that college students tend to be overwhelmingly liberal - and it seems this is true of college professors as well. A recent study conducted by Penn State University professor Matthew Woessner and Elizabethtown College professor April Kelly-Woessner found that people who identify themselves as conservatives are simply less likely to pursue a doctorate.

The common perception of Asian American students as the "silent minority" is being broken down by student responses to some questionable comments made by students at a conference held two weeks ago. After attending this year's East Coast Asian-American Student Union conference at Cornell University, students at Penn have started an e-mail campaign to raise awareness about remarks made about the Asian-American community by senior administrators at Cornell.

Hundreds of seniors gathered at Smokey Joe's Friday night to mark the end of the annual month-long celebration that is Feb Club. A chance for seniors to attend events on campus and throughout Philadelphia together, Feb Club has expanded since it took on its current form in 2004 of having multiple events during the month, Wharton senior and class president Puneet Singh said.

Baseball coach John Cole got exactly what he asked for when he scheduled the Quakers' home opener for February, the earliest it's been in years. Friday's scheduled doubleheader was delayed over 90 minutes because of frost on the infield dirt. When Penn and West Chester finally took the field at Meiklejohn Stadium to play only one game, it was 35 degrees.

The gloomy days are over for graduate students who are single and ready to mingle. They can find their true love - at speed dating. The Graduate and Professional Student Assembly organized its first speed-dating event on Friday evening at the Graduate Student Center.

With 14 seconds remaining and the score tied at North Carolina, Penn senior attacker Melissa Lehman made one final drive to the goal. She reared back and ripped off a shot. The ball bounced its way into the corner of net, giving Lehman a hat trick and the Penn women's lacrosse team an 8-7 win Saturday.

The men's lacrosse team was determined not to squander another three-goal lead. After Villanova closed within one goal with under two minutes left, the Quakers were able to stave off a comeback, holding on to win 7-6 on Saturday at Franklin Field. "We made some mistakes at the end, we made some mistakes during the game to keep them in the game, but the bottom line is we did what it took to win and that's what's important," coach Brian Voelker said.

The Los Angeles Times may be able to take a tip or two from four Wharton seniors on how to increase its profits. The undergraduate Wharton team placed second at the University of Southern California's annual Marshall International Case Competition, in which participating teams have to solve a real world business problem in 24 hours.

Universities around the country are richer than ever, but the money is not necessarily coming out of alumni's pockets. Contributions to colleges have reached $29.75 billion in 2007 - the highest ever - but the amount of that contribution that comes from alumni has decreased by 1.

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

Fifth place was not what the Penn men's and women's track teams had in mind for this weekend's Heptagonal Indoor Championships at Cornell. Despite several impressive individual accomplishments, both teams fell short of the podium. The women finished in fifth with a total of 45 points, 69 behind first-place Princeton.

In federal court Friday Engineering junior Ryan Goldstein pleaded guilty to helping a hacker crash the School of Engineering and Applied Science's server in February 2006. Goldstein pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting another person to gain unauthorized access to a protected computer, a federal misdemeanor.