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.

Flip through the men's basketball team's media guide or stop by a practice, and there are a few things that aren't hard to pick out.

For the first time in a month, the Quakers football team played a game that ended in regulation. And also for the first time in a month, Penn won. On Senior Day at Franklin Field, the Quakers defeated No. 17 Harvard, 22-13, ending a three-game losing streak.

Penn wrestling won't ease its way into the season - instead, it will jump in against four top-20 teams. The Quakers travel to East Lansing, Mich., this weekend for the Michigan State Open and the start of a promising season. The steep competition - including No.

Few people complain at constant Jew-bashing in 'Borat,' yet Saad Saadi's Halloween costume draws fiery criticism.

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.

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.

In 2003, a heralded Syracuse freshman led the team in scoring and rebounding and carried the Orange to a national championship. Four years later, Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim is hoping to get from Paul Harris a fraction of what he saw from Carmelo Anthony.

With five games to play in the fall season, Penn's teams have an overall record 43-37-5 and will not bring home any Ivy League titles. Some teams have been disappointing, some have played up to mediocre expectations, and some have demonstrated that there are reasons to have high hopes for the future.

For many students, the decision to pursue higher education is not a particularly difficult one to make. For St. Francis junior Bassith Yessoufou, the decision meant leaving his country, learning a new language and adapting to a culture that is wildly different from his home in the Ivory Coast.

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.

Avery Lawrence is a College junior from Charlottesville, Va. His e-mail address is lawrence@dailypennsylvanian.com.

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.

While the Penn men's basketball team is one of four Ivies without a black coach, the Red and Blue is still doing its part to support diversity. This weekend, the Quakers will compete in the Black Coaches Invitational, an event sponsored by the Black Coaches Association.

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.

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.

On Nov. 24, 2002, Penn beat Iowa State, 84-77 in the Midwest-dominated Las Vegas Invitational (the other two teams were Illinois and Eastern Illinois). That was the last time the Quakers played three games in three days - winning two - until this weekend, when the Quakers will take on Texas-El-Paso, Saint Francis (N.