Freshmen usually don't get a chance to compete in rowing's varsity championship races. But at yesterday's Head of the Charles Race in Boston, the men's freshman four was given a chance to shine on the water and finished ninth out of 21 teams with a time of 17:11.

DuBois College House received $1 million worth of updates over the summer. Residents hope to see more done in a larger-scale renovation administrators say is on the horizon. This summer's renovation included updates to common spaces like the TV lounge, fitness room and laundry areas, Facilities Director of Design and Construction Management Mariette Buchman said.

In a break from its usual Sunday routine, the Penn field hockey team started the day with a team breakfast and film-watching session. The pregame warm-up at Franklin Field featured mini-games, allowing each player to work out individual skills. And coach Val Cloud decided to switch around her lineup to add a fourth player to the midfield line in order give her squad an offensive edge.

Coming into Saturday's game with Dartmouth, the women's soccer team had gone undefeated in its past seven matches and, at 2-0-1, controlled its Ivy destiny. Dartmouth, meanwhile, was the league's doormat, searching for its first conference win in four tries.

When Columbia's final gasp ended with a fifth and final turnover on Saturday, when the score had finally settled, 15-10 in Penn's favor, after a seemingly endless series of three-and-outs, both sides struggled to decide what the result meant for them.

The men's soccer team logged 15 hours of driving time on its Saturday trip to Dartmouth. More importantly, it logged win No. 8 on the season, a 1-0 edging of the Big Green to remove the taste of two straight losses and put Penn back into Ivy title contention.

Columbia quarterback Shane Kelly sat in the post-game press conference after Penn's 15-10 win over the Lions with a blank stare on his face. His defense had just put up a huge performance, holding Penn to 204 yards and just 10 first downs. But Kelly thanked every big stop the defense made with an interception or some other miscue.

Alicia Puglionesi is a College senior from Havertown, Pa. Her e-mail address is puglionesi@dailypennsylvanian.com.

For some Philadelphia residents, Primate Liberation Week is about giving Penn students an education - and a reality check. This past Saturday, a group of some eight residents gathered at the corner of 34th and Walnut streets to protest animal cruelty as the week designated to aiding primates used for scientific research came to a close.

Two shootings occurred Friday night at 40th and Ludlow streets, killing one man and seriously injuring another. Terrence Davis, 18, was shot once in the back and was pronounced dead at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania at 2:10 a.m. Saturday, according to Officer Jill Russell, a Philadelphia Police spokeswoman.

Walking into Steinberg-Dietrich Hall last night, political analyst and Fox News commentator Dick Morris made it a point to introduce himself by shaking every attendee's hand, whether liberal or conservative. The College Republicans hosted Morris to speak to students about the upcoming presidential election and the looming fascist Islamic threat.

Goalkeeper Sara Rose has posted four shutouts for the women's soccer team this season, including blank slates over Harvard and Cornell - and there is nothing to stop her from thinking that Dartmouth will struggle to put one past her tomorrow in Hanover, N.

You know her as president, but now Amy Gutmann is taking on the role of professor, too. School of Arts and Sciences Dean Rebecca Bushnell announced last week that Penn President Amy Gutmann has been named the Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor in Political Science.

Fraternity houses are not known for being spotless - especially when some of the inhabitants shed all over the carpet. But that's a price the brothers of the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity house are willing to pay for the company of Brando and Callie. Brando, a yellow Labrador Retriever, and his sister Callie, a Chocolate Lab, can often be found at house parties and late night get-togethers stealing all the ladies and lapping up the attention.

YouTube-addicts beware - more distractions are on their way. The video-streaming Web site is in the process of loading several full-length episodes of TV shows such as Star Trek, Beverly Hills 90210 and MacGyver onto the site. This is a test run of YouTube's new "theater format," which features higher video quality and longer selections than the usual YouTube clips, and the player dims the rest of the applications open on screen.

With more people registered as Democrats than as Republicans in both Philadelphia and the state, Pennsylvania is looking a lot less like a swing state. But experts say more registered Democrats won't necessarily result in a victory for Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.

We're a nation of borrowers. According to Wednesday's USA Today (or does that make it the "USA Two days ago?") the average borrower's credit-card debt now stands at $1,717. The government borrowed billions from China to finance its no-tax and spend policies and doubled the national debt to $10 trillion over the past eight years (though, to be fair, I got this figure from the most recent Presidential debate, so there's no guarantee).