The Undergraduate Assembly elected its new executive board for the 2008-2009 school year last night after a six-hour meeting that was open to the public. College and Wharton junior Wilson Tong will lead the UA as the body's new chairman. Tong, the current vice chairman for external affairs, is also the first Asian-American chairman in the UA's history.

To many schools with less-than-rigorous threat assessment systems, the past year's spate of school shootings have been a wake-up call. Over the past year, many universities around the country have responded to shootings at Virginia Tech and other colleges by forming new groups to monitor students who display troubled behavior and assess whether they pose a wider threat to the community.

The styrofoam hats and wooden canes are back - but not on the usual Friday afternoon. Next Tuesday, the class of 2009 will officially make its passage into seniordom as part of the 93-year-old tradition of Hey Day. Hey Day is traditionally held on the last day of classes, a Friday.

As universities across the country continue to introduce campus-wide Internet access, the University of Chicago Law School is doing the exact opposite. The school recently announced plans to eliminate Internet access in most of its classrooms, but Penn has no plans to implement similar policies.

Some Penn students take classes in Fisher-Bennett Hall or David Rittenhouse Labs. Others head to Philadelphia public schools or community centers to participate in Academically Based Community Service Courses that teach "problem-solving learning." At yesterday's fifth-annual ABCS Summit, students, faculty and administrators gathered in Logan Hall to discuss the future of ABCS courses at Penn and possibilities for integrating them further into the curriculum.

Sipping water out of that Nalgene bottle might not be so good for you. Numerous studies, including one at the University of Cincinnati earlier this year, show that traces of the toxic substance bisphenol-A, commonly called BPA, are released from Nalgene bottles' "unbreakable" plastic.

The Hey Day T-shirt design was announced last night on the Web site of Penn's junior class. The shirt, which was designed by Engineering junior Chloe LeGendre, will feature a picture of a Monopoly board with the words "Hey Day 2008 Class of 2009: Our Turn to Play.

Legislation recently introduced in Congress would require private universities to recognize teaching and research assistants as a union if they elect to form one. That's big news for Graduate Employees Together - University of Pennsylvania, the graduate student group that wants to be recognized as a union by Penn.

Now that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has won the Pennsylvania primary by a 10-point margin, the race shifts to the remaining states - with, it seems, no clear end in sight. Clinton's win was a crucial victory that, for the time being, keeps her candidacy alive and validates her argument to superdelegates that she can win in swing states.

Lawyers for the family of Anne Ryan have dropped punitive damage charges from their malpractice lawsuit against the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Ryan, a College sophomore, died of meningitis last September after being misdiagnosed by Student Health and HUP physicians.

Photos by Mustafa Al-ammar, Rachel Baye, Ivona Boroje, and Alvin Loke

Penn students turned out in record numbers to vote in the Pennsylvania primary yesterday, in order to cast ballots in the pivotal contest between Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination. Altogether, about 2,500 students, more than one-fifth of Penn's student body, voted in this year's election - a significant jump from the 2006 midterm elections, when about 1,500 students voted in the general election.

The overall growth of applications from international graduate students has steadily declined over the last three years, according to a report released April 18 by the Council of Graduate Schools. Despite overall national decrease, 62 percent of the schools surveyed - including Penn - reported an average increase of 9 percent.

While many Penn students juggle academics, extracurricular activities and a social life, there is still one thing left for many to learn to balance - a checkbook. With the importance of financial literacy - knowledge of how to manage a credit-card to how to create a budget, for example - growing each and every year, trend-setting colleges all over the nation are reaching out to their students and expanding the financial advising resources available to them.

Sen. Hillary Clinton's victory in the Pennsylvania primary election last night came as little surprise to many on campus. Still, supporters of her opponent, Sen. Barack Obama, said they don't feel defeated. In fact, many said they anticipate that Obama will still win the Democratic presidential nomination and expressed plans to campaign for Obama leading up to next month's primaries in Indiana and North Carolina.

Professor Dan Bogen loves children's toys - designing them, that is. Bogen, an associate professor of Bioengineering since 1982, started a program called PennToys as a project for his Bioengineering Senior Design students. For more than 14 years, students involved with PennToys have designed devices so medical researches and therapists can use them to help diagnose and treat disabled children.

Robbery April 12 - A female unaffiliated with the University reported that while walking within a building on the 3400 block of Market St., an unknown suspect forcibly removed her pocketbook and fled the scene, at about 6:30 p.m. Assault April 12 - Jason China, 26, of the 1700 block of 19th St.