The Undergraduate Assembly prides itself on representing the concerns of Penn students. But the survey data that help them do so may only represent students with a specific agenda, experts say. The UA distributes several online surveys each semester - there have been two this fall - to the entire undergraduate population via e-mail and the UA's own Web site.

Former U.S. Army Chaplain James Yee was told he was being given a two-week break from working at Guantanamo Bay, the U.S. naval base in Cuba where war on terror detainees are held. When he arrived in Florida, his bags were searched and he became a prisoner like those he had preached to, held at a super-maximum security prison in Charleston, N.

Whether it's going to college or getting a job, high-school graduation usually means more freedom. But for Engineering exchange student Weijie Poh and College sophomore Shijie Lu, the end of high school was the beginning of a grueling stint in the Singapore Armed Forces.

University officials still haven't decided which company, Microsoft Corp. or Google Inc., will replace Penn's current Webmail service. Officials said earlier this year that they would select a company to host all undergraduate e-mail accounts by about this time, at the latest.

When Penn alumnus Marco Lentini first thought of developing a health-conscious cafe near campus, he says people thought he was crazy. "Philadelphia had just been ranked the fattest city in the world," Lentini said. "But it takes leadership to transcend boundaries and come up with new ideas.

Best-selling author Jonathan Safran Foer doesn't particularly enjoy the process of writing. "I don't love writing. I just don't," he said. "Writing is a little like pulling a tooth - out of your penis." Foer, author of Everything is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, put in double-duty last night, attending a dinner organized by Fisher-Hassenfeld College House before making an appearance at the Penn Bookstore.

It might have seemed like early admissions was toast after the University of Virginia, a public school, followed Harvard and Princeton in abolishing the practice this fall.

The Halloween snapshot that's been plaguing Penn President Amy Gutmann is even the talk of the White House. Well, some reporters are trying to make it that way. White House spokesman Tony Snow deflected questions about the now-infamous photograph at a press conference yesterday, a White House transcript shows.

At least it doesn't seem to be as bad as that "water buffalo" incident.

It may be a long shot to turn an idea into a marketable product, but that should not be a deterrent to student innovators, a panel concluded yesterday. In front of an audience of about 40 in Skirkanich Hall's Berger Auditorium, panelists discussed how innovators can improve their odds of success as they take their ideas to the marketplace.

Ex-Wharton professor Scott Ward pled not guilty yesterday to charges of producing, importing and possessing child pornography.

Few students would want to go back to eating lunch at their elementary-school cafeterias. But that is exactly what Jan Poppendieck does. A professor of sociology at Hunter College, a part of the City University of New York, Poppendieck studies poverty, hunger and food assistance in the United States.

An estimated 10 million Americans under the age of 30 cast their votes in Tuesday's mid-term elections, 2 million more than in 2002. High voting rates on Penn's campus reflected this trend. According to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, which studies voting among the young and reported these preliminary data, youth voting increased by 4 percentage points from the previous mid-term election.

The fish may have been fresh, but that doesn't mean students were biting. Faced with the task of pleasing the often-sophisticated palate of the average Penn student, Dining Services put its faith last month in the small island nation of Iceland to get students excited about eating on campus.

The new College of Arts and Sciences curriculum just premiered a few months ago, but some students are pushing for more changes. Last night, about 50 students came to Rodin College House's Rooftop Lounge to discuss a proposed requirement that would mandate that College students study minority culture in the United States.

An anonymous donor has posed a challenge to a scholarship program for local high-school students: Raise $2 million, and receive $1 million more. Officials from the program are rising to the occasion. As the grant was announced at the Philadelphia Education Fund's second annual awards night last month, "there was a great deal of excitement . but a belief that we would raise the funds to reach the challenge," Philadelphia Scholars Director Carole Boughter said.

Sometimes, apologizing just doesn't seem to be enough. A vocal group of alumni and academics continues to voice outrage at Penn President Amy Gutmann for posing in a picture with a student dressed as a suicide bomber.