During the final presidential debate on Wednesday night, fewer than a dozen students crowded around a living room TV, tuned in to Fox News and cheered on their candidate: Sen. John McCain, the Republican nominee. On a largely liberal campus, the College Republicans are ready to share their message with whomever is willing to listen.

A vacant West Philadelphia lot is being prepared for the relocation of the city's only secure youth detention facility - but the elementary school across the street is so unhappy about the move that it also intends to relocate, according to the school's chief administrative officer.

After a healthy helping of hearing John McCain boast about "Joe the plumber" in Wednesday's presidential debate, journalist Katha Pollitt helped to ease the tension of the political race while discussing her views at Houston Hall last night. Tackling issues such as abortion, poverty, human rights and foreign policy in her writing, Pollitt considers herself a feminist columnist.

From financial crises to city-flattening natural disasters, the United States is a nation at risk. It is the management of that risk that is important, argues Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, who spoke at Penn yesterday about these issues at the federal level.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The United States could be feeling the costs of the Iraq War for years to come, according to 2001 Nobel Prize winner and Columbia economics professor Joseph Stiglitz. Stiglitz addressed those costs - which total $3 trillion - in a lecture to students at College Hall yesterday.

With economic turmoil in the headlines, panelists at the Fiscal Wake-Up tour in Houston Hall on Tuesday told the tale of a potential greater crisis in the near future - one in which the entire American standard of living could be at stake. Panelists included Robert Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition; Stuart Butler, vice-president of domestic and economic policy studies at the Heritage Foundation; Alice Rivlin, director of economic studies at the Brookings Institution and David Walker, president and CEO of the Peter G.

Last night, Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama debated the issues one last time before this year's highly anticipated presidential election comes to a close on Nov. 4. And like any debate, the candidates' performances generated discussion across campus, some more organized than others.

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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.