Homicides are up in Philadelphia, and though city and police leaders are working to reverse the disturbing trend, they say there is no quick fix.

The Social Planning and Events Committee elected its new executive board in a closed election on Monday night. Newly elected members are: n President: College junior Max Cancre. n Vice President: College junior Anna Raper. n Treasurer: College junior Tony Rizzo.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, a recent poll shatters the perception that the majority of young people are liberal.

Five seconds into the second half of the biggest lacrosse game of her life, Penn sophomore Becca Edwards was flat on her back. Playing against No. 15 Princeton with the Ivy League title on the line, Edwards's stick got caught with an opponent's while she tried to get the opening draw control of the second half.

Threats forced evacuations and cancelled classes on several campuses across the nation over the last two days as universities dealt with the possibility of attacks copying a Virginia Polytechnic Institute student's shooting spree. "Copycats are things that we have to look out for every time there's a shooting of this type," said Beverly Glenn, executive director of the Hamilton Fish Institute on School and Community Violence.

Computer Information and Science professor Sanjeev Khanna has been awarded with a Guggenheim Fellowship in honor of his work in theoretical computer science, University officials announced yesterday. Khanna's field specializes in the computer resources needed for certain computational tasks, like the analysis of algorithm complexity.

After five hours of debate and difficult questions last night, the Undergraduate Assembly elected its executive board for the 2007-2008 school year.

$56,766Amount Chaka Fattah's mayoral campaign agreed to return to donors yesterday.Source: The Philadelphia Inquirer

BLACKSBURG, Va. - Much of Tuesday night's emotional candlelight vigil focused on healing and moving forward as a community. But as Virginia Polytechnic Institute students dispersed from the service, they faced a more immediate, practical question: With classes canceled through the end of the week, what to do with all their time?

Ladies and gentlemen, they're out of the red. For the first time in 23 years, the Penn softball team has guaranteed itself an overall winning record. Such an occasion should warrant a stylish win, and the Quakers did not disappoint. Penn swept Cornell in a doubleheader yesterday at Warren Field, beating the Big Red 7-1 and 5-4 with equally solid pitching and batting performances.

It took Penn 78 days past their intended deadline to announce an e-mail provider.

Report: Hoyas asst. offered Princeton job Princeton has offered its head basketball coaching position to Georgetown assistant coach Sydney Johnson, Princeton's student newspaper reported yesterday. According to an online report by The Daily Princetonian, Johnson, a 1997 Tigers alumnus who has coached professionally for only three years, has been offered the job but has yet to officially accept it.

As colleges across the country review communication methods in the wake of Monday's massacre at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Division of Public Safety officials say they have been exploring new mass notification technology for over a year. DPS spokeswoman Karima Zedan said officials are examining comprehensive emergency notification systems that would allow them to send notices via a variety of methods - through cell phones, e-mail, PDAs and home phones and to both the Penn community and students' emergency contacts.

A day after an extra-inning thriller, Penn made things a little easier yesterday in Lawrenceville, N.J. The Quakers scored four runs in the first inning and never looked back, thrashing Rider 13-5. Junior Kyle Armeny led the offensive charge for Penn (17-14), with his team-leading seventh home run, a solo shot in the third, as well as an RBI groundout in the first.

A new U.S. Cultural Diversity requirement for the College of Arts and Sciences's Class of 2012 was unanimously approved at the faculty meeting on Tuesday. The requirement "aims to develop [student] knowledge of the history, dynamic cultural system and heterogeneous populations" of the United States, according to its proposal.

A relaxed atmosphere, class evaluations, maybe some donuts: These are the traits that characterize the last days of class at Penn. But the bar may have been raised yesterday, when Malcolm Gladwell, bestselling author of The Tipping Point and Blink, and rising musical star Kenna appeared on campus to lecture at Sociology professor David Grazian's "Sociology of Media and Pop Culture" class.

It took him eight years to complete, but New York Times sports columnist William Rhoden's new book is starting to make some noise. With a title like Forty Million Dollar Slaves, the buzz would have been impossible to avoid. But at yesterday's "Race and Sports" lecture, sponsored by Penn's Center for Africana Studies, Rhoden proved his book is more than a catchy title.