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.

As the women's tennis team heads to Flushing Meadows - the annual site of the U.S. Open - coach Mike Dowd hopes his players will be able to enjoy New York City. But he also has moderately lofty goals for this weekend's National Tennis Center Invite, which he hopes will give his young team some valuable experience.

Men's tennis coach Nik DeVore likes winning - but he sees an advantage to losing, too. "Losing matches is not such a bad thing because then we get to play consolation games," DeVore said. Consolation matches, and the experience that comes with them, should not be hard to come by for the Quakers today at the Columbia Invitational in New York.

The men's soccer team had its five minutes of fame, but it appears that's all the glory the Quakers will get for the time being. Penn moved into the No. 26 spot in the Collegesoccernews.com poll and No. 19 on the NSCAA coaches' poll Monday after 3-2 wins over Villanova and Cornell.

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.

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

With former Penn wrestling coach Zeke Jones on his way to Colorado Springs, attention now turns to the Quakers' future. Athletic director Steve Bilsky is now left with two options: Make Rob Eiter, Jones' former assistant and current interim coach, the full-time coach, or hire from outside Penn.

A few weeks ago, a man named David Foster Wallace took his own life at the age of 46, ending a protracted battle with depression. This fall will surely be remembered as when the financial sector began its collapse - or, assuming the rosiest scenario, survived a convulsive restructuring.

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.

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.

Commercial. Catalogue. Couture. College Hall? Clad in a Michael Kors bolero and Christian Louboutin shoes, English professor Wendy Steiner appeared last month in a photo spread for the college issue of The New York Times Magazine. Steiner - a self-proclaimed "lifelong subscriber to Vogue magazine" - has always believed in a close connection between the worlds of fashion and the arts.

Got the late-night munchies? Too bad. Stores underneath 1920 Commons - including Subway, Starbucks, and the C3 convenience store - are now closing at 9:30 p.m. instead of midnight. That leaves very few options for students hungry after 9:30 p.m., which in college-time, isn't very late at all.

Political campaigns have made unprecedented efforts to register new voters this year - but attempts have already been made to scare some of them away from the polls on Nov. 4. A flyer has been distributed around Philadelphia universities and in low-income neighborhoods over the last month, incorrectly stating that voters with outstanding arrest warrants or unpaid traffic tickets might be arrested if they show up to cast a ballot.

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The City of Philadelphia will face a budget deficit of at least $650 to 850 million over the next five years, Mayor Michael Nutter said yesterday. Nutter had warned in mid-September that Philadelphia would face a deficit of at least $450 million due to fall off in business-privilege taxes and increases in pension costs.

Jennifer Lesser is a College junior from Minneapolis, Minn. Her e-mail address is lesser@dailypennsylvanian.com.

I never thought I'd see the day when a top Republican publicly decried "greed and corruption" on Wall Street. In last week's debate, Sarah Palin let loose a stream of words you'd normally associate with the left: "Never will we be exploited and taken advantage of again by those who are managing our money.