It was a bit like New Student Orientation all over again last night for next year's residents of the Radian, as they met with future roommates and hallmates for the first time. As construction progresses on the Radian, located at 39th and Walnut streets, its future residents gathered last night at Marathon Grill.

After all the glory of Wednesday - when Penn won five straight games to topple its arch-rival, No. 1 Princeton - it's back to business as usual for the women's squash team. On Saturday, the Quakers (8-0) will host their final two home matches of the seasons, taking on unranked George Washington and No.

From force-feeding pledges various mysterious substances to quaffing copious amounts of alcohol in creative ways, the fraternity initiation process has always been one of the more curious practices of American college culture. However, this rite of passage took a turn for the worse at Yale, where a recent Zeta Psi pledge event resulted in a spate of controversy when the Women's Center threatened to file a lawsuit against the fraternity.

It took Jim Skinner more than 40 years to go from flipping burgers to managing fortunes for the fast-food giant McDonalds. Yesterday, he shared some of the secrets to his success with students at the Woodlands Ballroom at the Hilton Inn at Penn. The event was a corporate benefit banquet billed as "An Evening of Philanthropy," hosted by Penn's chapter of the Alpha Kappa Psi Professional business fraternity.

For Americans, there's July 4th, there's New Years Eve - and then there's the Super Bowl. Between the game and the grub, this annual showdown between football's best has become what amounts to a national celebration for football fanatics and novices alike.

Forget the Florida trip. Forget the Big 5. Forget Loyola. Forget North Carolina. The real season starts today. And it's a late start, to be sure. Harvard's trip to the Palestra tonight will mark the first time that the Quakers (5-12, 0-0) have ever opened their Ivy League season in February.

Mayor Michael Nutter's decision last week to revoke SugarHouse's casino license for its proposed 5,500-slot parlor provided a new setback for casino developers interested in coming to Philadelphia. Nutter revoked the license in order to more completely evaluate whether the proposed casino is the best use for the land at the Fishtown site.

In addition to playing Jetman, competing in Food Friendzy to win CampusFood Cash and posting bumper stickers on friends' walls, users of the social-networking site Facebook.com have been improving their vocabulary skills. But the almost 600,000 thousand Facebook users who play Scrabulous - a free, online version of the board game Scrabble-- - every day, may have to find a new hobby.

This may be the year for Yale to polish off those dancing shoes. While they may be horribly out-of-style by now (the last time the team went to the NCAA tournament was 1962), with four seniors returning and a seemingly wide-open Ivy League, the question is, why not Yale? Led by captain and first-team All-Ivy guard Eric Flato, the Bulldogs have one of the more experienced teams in the Ancient Eight.

As Penn's Faculty Senate debates whether or not to require prospective professors to self-disclose criminal backgrounds, it's important to remember that a little precaution goes a long way. To that end, we encourage the Faculty Senate to go a step further in its efforts to reform the University's hiring practices, by requiring criminal background checks on prospective professors.

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

Less than a month into his first season with Harvard, coach Tommy Amaker was feeling good. After a 62-51 win over Michigan on Dec. 1, Amaker had not only stuck it to his former team, he had also pulled the Crimson's record up to .500 in the tough early going of the non-conference season.

An AlliedBarton security guard has been arrested and charged with theft and receiving stolen property, according to Deputy Chief of Investigations Mike Morrin of the Penn Police. The incident marks the second time since November that an on-campus AlliedBarton guard has been arrested.

When Penn women's tennis coach Mike Dowd arrived in Philadelphia in December 1996 at the ripe age of 24, he was starving. He was looking for tennis players who wanted to sit down at the table with him and dig in. "We wanted to find hungry tennis players, players that are still getting better and wanted to prove themselves when they got to college," Dowd said of his plan to reinvent the program.

Sleep. Exercise. Fling. These are all things being recommended to students this year. "Fling: Ask Us Why" was revealed by the Social Planning and Events Committee last Friday to be the theme of this year's Spring Fling, which will take place on Friday, April 11 and Saturday, April 12.

Last week, the Daily Pennsylvanian ran an editorial advocating the expansion of need-blind admissions to international students. In other words, it argued that Penn shouldn't factor a foreign student's ability to pay in the admissions process. I'm in favor of diversity, but I beg to differ.