After ten months in Beirut, Lebanon, College senior Sara Barclay saw her study-abroad experience come to a sudden and surreal end aboard an evacuation helicopter on July 23. "It was really a strange, bizarre thing to see Lebanon in this state," Barclay said.

Most new freshmen know it's a bad idea to use their new roommates' stuff without asking. But this year, the Class of 2010 is reading a whole book about property laws. As part of New Student Orientation, freshmen will discuss Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity, this year's Penn Reading Project book, as author and Penn alumnus Lawrence Lessig debates intellectual property issues with a Penn Law professor.

Abdi Farah is a College sophomore from Owings Mills, Md. His e-mail address is abdi@sas.upenn.edu.

They oversee thousands of students. They manage millions of dollars. They run the show here at Penn. But many undergraduates can't even name them. These are the people whose choices affect every member of the Penn community.   It has been three years since Amy Gutmann shed the robe of Princeton University's provost to serve as Penn's president.

When watching Invincible, the viewer is treated to a bird's-eye-view panoramic of the now extinct Veterans' Stadium. But as the camera passes over the top of the concrete giant, an astute viewer will notice that the field is not the artificial turf of the Vet but rather the Sprinturf of Penn's Franklin Field.

Alexandria, Va. -- Wharton professor emeritus Scott Ward remains in custody after federal agents discovered videos allegedly showing him engaging in sex acts with teenage boys. Ward, who will no longer be teaching at Penn, was charged with importation of child pornography after being searched as he returned to the United States from a trip to Brazil on Sunday.

After just two seasons coaching Penn, women's squash coach Jack Wyant has been named coach of the U.S. Junior Women's Squash Team. The team will compete in the world championships in Hong Kong next year, but meanwhile, Wyant will continue coaching the Quakers.

Before you request that transfer application to Stanford or the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, you might want to listen to what the experts have to say about Penn's drop in the U.S. News & World Report college rankings. Their overall message: It's just not that big of a deal.

When Fran Dunphy ended his 17-year-long tenure as the coach of the Penn basketball program, he set off a chain reaction of personnel shifts that touched colleges around the country: Temple, Brown, Northwestern, even Central Connecticut State. But the one man who may have made the biggest adjustment over the past several months was Glen Miller, the man with whom athletic director Steve Bilsky chose to start the new era of Penn basketball.

The fate of free digital music on campus still hangs in limbo as Penn students begin arriving for the new semester. Campus leaders promise that students will soon have access to free, legal music - and students are eager to get it. Ruckus - a music and movie subscription program that will soon be available for all Penn students - is slated to begin operation for all students this fall.

Though Penn's move eastward dominated much of the conversation about campus expansion over the summer, several projects closer to Penn's core have also been under way. Construction continued through the muggy Philadelphia summer, and students are returning to a newly completed building and a rapidly changing campus.

The third time's the charm - at least that's officials are hoping in regards to the retail space at 3716 Spruce St.

This school year marks the 40th since Penn adopted its modern undergraduate-admissions policy. Not that you'd know: The University hasn't held any essay competitions or thrown any parties, as it did last year in honor of Benjamin Franklin's 300th birthday.

A map holds pushpins marking the hometowns of international students now at Penn. The Class of 2010 is notable for having a larger portion of students from abroad than previous classes had.

Despite opposition, casinos still on track Proposed slot parlors are still on track to open in Philadelphia in the coming years, despite protests by local residents. Five companies have applied for the two Philadelphia licenses and are awaiting the decision of the Pennsylvania Gaming Board.

New men's basketball coach Glen Miller hasn't seen his team play a single game yet, but his program has already been hit with a series of unfortunate setbacks that could leave him shorthanded when the season begins.

Despite several shootings on campus this year, officials at Security on Campus think Penn hasn't dropped the ball on safety. In fact, SOC, a national non-profit organization dedicated to preventing violence on college campuses, selected the University to host its kick-off to the second annual National Campus Safety Awareness Month, held yesterday.