For Graduate School of Education student Kathy Schultz, the allegations being leveled against University of Illinois at Chicago education professor Bill Ayers are "charges of McCarthysim." That's what caused her to join the more than 3,200 people - including eight others affiliated with Penn - in signing a recent national petition in support of Ayers.

"We need to get beyond" gender stereotypes, said Penn President Amy Gutmann at the "Women Who Rule" panel last night at the Annenberg School for Communication. Five female leaders in academia formed the panel on gender consciousness and solidarity among women in present day society.

"Why can't I get sex more than every four months?" "The government does not believe in global warming." "Nobody listens to me." Apparently, Philadelphians had a lot to complain about last month. But that last grievance won't be true for much longer - those words are now in the chorus of a song that the city's first complaint choir will perform publicly in Center City on Nov.

Next week, Penn will rock to the music of Led Zeppelin when Bustle in Your Hedgerow performs in the Social Planning and Events Committee Jazz & Grooves' annual Fall concert. The band is scheduled to perform on Oct. 21 at the Rotunda, located at 4012 Walnut St.

Officials in academia at Penn and beyond have decided to take a stand in light of last month's detention of Iranian scholar Mehdi Zakerian, who was scheduled to teach at Penn Law this year. Penn President Amy Gutmann recently sent a letter directly to the president of Iran expressing her concerns on behalf of the academic community and urging the Iranian government to release Zakerian.

The devil's advocate may know best in cancer research. Contrary to scientific dogma, Penn researchers have found that certain proteins long thought to suppress tumor growth may actually facilitate it. Complement proteins - a family of 30 proteins that are part of the immune system - had been thought to slow tumor growth, much in the same way they fight bacteria.

For pollsters, cell-phone static may be getting in the way of good polling. Across the country, pollsters attempting to accurately reflect the public's choice for president are facing a big - and unprecedented - problem: cell-phone dominance among youth combined with historic young-voter turnout in the primaries.

Technology upgrades across campus are giving more students an interactive classroom experience. Numerous central pool classrooms - spaces that are open to classes held by any school - are in the process of a massive technology update. Changes include increased accommodations for "clicker" technology, upgrades in projection technology, Windows 2007 on all classroom computers and the installation of SMART Sympodium, a new program that can record a professor's voice as well as what he does on the computer in a lecture hall.

One early Sunday this past September, College senior Zachary Roseman hopped onto the Bolt Bus with his friend Benji and headed to New York City. "It was one of the last times Yankee stadium was going to be standing" said Roseman, "and my friend had never been to a game.

For a year now, student government leaders have been unsure of Penn's future role in Ivy Council, a consortium of student leaders from around the Ivy League. The disagreement resurfaced in a debate at last Sunday's Undergraduate Assembly meeting about whether to fund the Penn delegation's travel to the upcoming conference, which will be held tomorrow at Columbia University.

Try and say it: Philadelphia sells sea shells by the Jersey shore. It doesn't carry quite the same ring, but if the tongue twister is the most consideration you've given shells recently, it's worth paying a visit to the annual Philadelphia Shell Show this weekend.

Some Wharton courses have, in one sense, become paper-thin recently. A number of Wharton professors have offered course bulk packs online to students this semester. By going the paperless route, professors say they are giving students a convenient, cost-effective and environmentally friendly way of acquiring their course material.

The Times Higher Education, a London-based higher-education magazine, recently ranked Penn the 11th-best university in the world, a three-place improvement over last year. The rankings are based on peer and employee review as well as data on the school's research output, teaching, and international orientation.

The new freshmen faces in student government have increased the overall diversity of those groups, many student government and minority coalition leaders say. There has been a specific focus by those groups this year to increase minority involvement in student government, including an information session in September hosted by the six branches of student government and six minority and cultural coalitions.

College sophomore Francis Udler calls his plans for this weekend "ridiculous." "I'm going to have to study during fall break," Udler said.

Penn's School of Veterinary Medicine is making an effort to curb a national and statewide shortage of some types of veterinarians. In recent years, there has been a lack of veterinarians who specialize in fields other than companion-animal practice, according to Gary Althouse, chairman of the Vet School's Clinical Studies department.

When it comes to media spotlight, Penn is near - but not quite at - the top. Penn is number 11 in a new ranking by the Global Language Monitor that rated 4,000 American colleges and universities according to their popularity in the media. Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Columbia universities all cracked the top 10.