Jody Pollock

Senior societies are all about big names - big-name leaders on campus and their own big names scrawled all over Locust Walk. With three of the oldest senior societies at Penn - the Sphinx Senior Society, the Friar Senior Society and the Mortar Board Senior Honor Society - admitting their new classes this past week, each claims to have snatched up the best and brightest campus leaders around.

When College freshmen Everett Benjamin and Ryan Jobson applied for housing as incoming students, they listed the same top three preferences: DuBois College House, DuBois and DuBois. Now the two roommates and Political Co-chairs of UMOJA - the umbrella organization for student groups of the African Diaspora - are fighting to keep DuBois at the top of other students' lists by pushing for renovations of the 36-year-old college house.

They used to hold parties in the basement of the ARCH, plastering newspapers over the windows to protect the anonymity of the attendees. But for the current Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual Transgender community on campus, these carefully guarded gatherings are a thing of the past.

They've been together for two years, but they still can't hold hands in public. Kate, a College sophomore, began dating Dan, a University of Charleston sophomore, while still in high school. Still together, their biggest relationship issue isn't that they are long distance - it's that they are a secret.

It was all about the purple fishnets. College sophomore Cameron Clark spent the past few weeks preparing for his debut as Britney Spears last night, and he couldn't have done it without the "proper purple fishnets." In towering black lace-up boots and a pink miniskirt, Clark was just one of the many Penn performers who participated in the second-annual gender-bending drag show last night.

On Sunday, the Undergraduate Assembly urged the University to examine whether the presence of on-campus blood collectors who are bound by an FDA policy banning certain blood donors violates Penn's non-discrimination policy. Despite a national blood shortage, millions are prohibited from donating by the Federal Drug Administration's lifetime ban on men who have had sex with men (MSM) since 1977.

For some, the costs of studying abroad include more than just plane tickets, hostel fees and European bar tabs. With some study abroad programs in the Southern Hemisphere beginning as early as mid-July, students heading below the equator for fall semester will see their breaks cut in half and formal summer jobs and internships possibly impacted by their academic calendars.

With an ocean, a twenty-four-hour plane ride and a closet door separating him from his family and friends in Australia, College freshman Alec Webley was facing the frightening prospect of coming out without a clear support system. Unsure of how to approach his friends and family "who had only known me as straight," Webley sought the help of the Queer Student Alliance's program for questioning and closeted students.

Penn prides itself on hosting the "largest community of color in the Ivy League," according to interim Admissions Dean Eric Kaplan. But that figure can be deceiving as Penn simultaneously ranks low when it comes to Latino students. College junior Angel Jacome, chairman of admissions and recruitment for the Latino Coalition - the umbrella organization for Latino student groups - hopes to reconcile Penn's small Latino population with its reputation for diversity with a series of recruitment initiatives targeted at Latino students.

With the presidential election fast approaching, College freshman Atlee Melillo thought it would be the perfect occasion for some wedding cake. Adorned with two grooms on one side and two brides on the other, Melillo said she hopes the white cake she passed out yesterday in Houston Hall will serve as an educational - and delicious - reminder that gay marriage is still very much an election issue, she said.