When Virginia Tech sophomore Ashley Roe left school yesterday, the campus, normally bustling with 26,000 students, was "a ghost town." "There was a line of police cars, and they were talking to people trying to enter the campus," she said. Yesterday morning, in the deadliest gun massacre in U.

In the wake of shootings on the Virginia Tech campus, Vice President of Public Safety Maureen Rush called for better communication and improved student preparedness as the best way to ensure safety if a similar incident were to occur on campus. Thirty-two people were killed before an unidentified gunman took his own life yesterday at the rural Virginia campus in the worst mass shooting in United States history.

In the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings yesterday, the obvious question being asked on college campuses across the country is, what if it happened here? One of the principle steps the Penn Police took years ago - even before the Columbine attacks in 1998 - to deal with the potential of this type of attack was creating a SWAT team, officially called the Emergency Response Team.

The State of New York announced plans yesterday to address the conflicts of interest in the student-loan industry, according to an online MSNBC report. Lenders would be prohibited from offering financial benefits such as referral fees, gifts or trips to university employees.

An alleged carjacker was shot twice and killed during a struggle with Penn Police at about 11:00 a.m. yesterday near 40th and Spruce streets.

Ever had a police officer bring you chicken soup when you were sick? If Penn Police Chief Mark Dorsey and Vice President of the Division of Public Safety Maureen Rush had their way, you just might. Dorsey and Rush, who worked together for the City of Philadelphia before Dorsey became chief in November 2004, call themselves neighborhood people - and they want to do their part to bridge the gap between the Penn and West Philadelphia communities.

The University of Pennsylvania's School of Social Policy and Practice will host a symposium next week to address ways for charitable donors to assess whether they are, in fact, affecting their designated causes. Former Penn President Judith Rodin will deliver the keynote speech of the "Benjamin Franklin Leadership Symposium.

Today is the deadline for the second-annual GAPSA-Provost's Award for Interdisciplinary Innovation. The two-year-old award, a summer fellowship jointly sponsored by the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly and the Office of the University Provost, consists of a $2,000 monthly summer stipend for graduate and professional students who are pursuing interdisciplinary research.

Joseph Fischer spent 27 years working for the Philadelphia Police, mostly investigating homicides. By 1998, he had qualified for retirement and a pension and was ready to move on. "You handle 1,200 homicides, I guess you figure you've seen them all," he said.

After 19 years of work, Penn has installed the final piece in an 18,700-foot jigsaw puzzle. This past weekend, officials completed the last leg of a system of underground pipes that will change the way Penn provides air conditioning. The $125 million project, started in 1988, will connect all University buildings to a single network of pipes - 40 to 60 inches, and lying as low as 20 feet underground - that carries chilled water.

When the MPAA talks, the University listens - well, for the most part. Last month, the Motion Picture Association of America published its list of top-25 colleges for illegal downloading and asked universities to enact four measures to stop the problem, including punishing student offenders and establishing a filter on the college network.

The prosecution will not make the murder trial of Economics professor Rafael Robb a capital case, meaning the death penalty will not be an option in sentencing, Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce Castor told The Associated Press last week. Prosecutors decided not to seek the death penalty because they have not found aggravating circumstances that would make that sentence appropriate.

Penn Police shot an alleged carjacker twice at about 11:00 a.m. today. He was taken to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and died from the gunshot wounds at about 12:40 p.m.

With a serendipitous calm before the year's biggest rainstorm, students across Penn put their license to Fling to good use. Although the forecasts predicted cold weather and a 30-percent chance of rain on Saturday, most of the two-day carnival was marked by sunny skies and cool but pleasant weather.

NEW YORK, N.Y. - He may not look it, but Penn Trustee George Weiss is akin to a fairy godmother - well, almost. Weiss wears a suit and tie instead of a wand and wings, but he and other supporters of undergraduate financial aid at the University make wishes come true by providing scholarships for hundreds of Penn students each year.

The School of Arts and Sciences has scaled back this year's faculty recruiting efforts due to unprecedented success last year, and some officials say smaller academic programs are feeling the squeeze the worst. According to Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences Dennis DeTurck, Penn's recruitment and retention efforts last year were more successful than administrators had anticipated.

Despite cold temperatures, long waits between sets and a parking ticket issued to Third Eye Blind, the Social Planning and Events Committee labeled the sold-out Friday concert a big success.