Law & Order is the second longest-running primetime drama in television history, and yesterday Penn students could've killed for the chance to meet one of the writers responsible for the show's success. Jonathan Greene, a writer and co-executive producer of the NBC television series Law & Order: Special Victims Unit was brought to the Kelly Writers House by English professor Gail Shister.

After a lot of tinkering, field hockey coach Val Cloud may have finally found her secret ingredient for success. Last Sunday against Columbia, Penn (3-10, 2-2 Ivy) moved a defender up to play midfielder. With the 3-4-2 scheme, the Red and Blue responded by playing with more cohesion and coming up with a rare victory.

With less than two weeks left before Election Day, recent polls in Pennsylvania suggest Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama leads Republican nominee John McCain by as much as 10 percent. But this doesn't eliminate Pennsylvania's battleground status just yet.

Two higher-education groups are asking colleges and universities to provide them with completed copies of a questionnaire recently distributed by the Internal Revenue Service. The Association of Governing Boards and the National Association of College and University Business Officers hope to collate and analyze the data from the form, which Penn has not received.

Engineering senior Ryan Goldstein was sentenced yesterday to one year of various types of confinement and was fined $30,000 for his involvement in a hacking scheme that caused a Penn server to crash. He received five years of probation from U.S. District Judge Michael Baylson.

Massive bulk packs are a necessary evil. Many Penn classes require students to purchase these packages of notes, which can contain upward of 500 pages. Printed and bound bulk packs can be expensive, often over $50. With the economy in the trash and textbook prices ever-rising, this cost can put a significant dent in the Penn student's wallet.

"Yes, al Qaeda is an Islamic organization," affirmed Imam Zaid Shakir to a group in Logan Hall on Tuesday night, "in the sense that it is an organization associated with Muslims." But Shakir was anxious to divert the audience's attention to "the very real question of whether such an organization actually exists, or whether the U.

It was a gloomy day on Wall Street yesterday as well as in the Annenberg Center, as a panel of Wharton professors delivered a bleak outlook for the current economic situation.

Students in one section of Math 104 were forced to retake an exam this month after the professor suspected cheating had occurred as students handed in their tests. According to several students in the class, the alleged cheating occurred on Wednesday, Oct.

For all those diehard Phillies fans out there, this coming week should be special. For the first time in 15 years your Phils are back in the Fall Classic. But if you want to make it down to Citizens Bank Park to watch the Series in person, it's going to cost you - listings on the ticket resale Web site StubHub.

Cindy McCain, wife of Republican presidential nominee John McCain, held a rally in downtown Philadelphia yesterday morning touting her husband's candidacy and stressing his readiness to "put country first." The rally, held at the National Constitution Center, came just 14 days before the country goes to the polls to vote for president on Nov.

Amira Fawcett is an Engineering senior from Houston, Texas. Her e-mail address is fawcett@dailypennsylvanian.com.

The whole 2008 election cycle played out in just under two hours at Clark Park on Saturday afternoon. Enormous puppets of elephants, donkeys, oil wells and ballot boxes wheeled and danced around the park's main lawn, as about 200 spectators alternately cheered and hissed.

They say Chuck Bednarik, a Hall of Fame linebacker and center and a Penn grad, was the last "60-Minute Man" in football. Don't look now, but Colgate's Nate Eachus might be inheriting that throne. During the second quarter of the Raiders' 38-22 victory over Cornell on Saturday, the freshman left his spot at linebacker to take over for starting running back Jordan Scott, the leading rusher in the Football Championship Subdivision.

It might seem easy for a school located in a city surrounded by great farmland to source its food locally. I'm talking, of course, about Penn, located in Philadelphia, a fairly quick drive from Lancaster County, Bucks County and New Jersey. But try finding enough lettuce to feed thousands of salad-eaters several times a day, every day of the week, for eight and a half months of the year.

Starting with a banquet in Houston Hall Sunday night and a musical performance last night, the Muslim Students Association is working to increase knowledge about Islam. It is Islam Awareness Week, an event held annually on college and university campuses nationwide in an effort to raise awareness and eliminate any existing misconceptions of Islam.