Yanik Ruiz-Ram

A recent donation could help give citizenship a boost at Penn. A $2.5 million endowment from the Mellon Foundation will be donated to Penn for a new interdisciplinary program on Democracy, Citizenship and Constitutionality, University officials announced at the end of last semester.

Ed Rendell is the incumbent governor of Pennsylvania and is campaigning for a second term in office. Rendell, a 1965 Penn graduate, became governor in 2003 and faced a $2 billion state structural deficit. His main goal has been to cut government spending and jump-start the state's economy by promoting job growth.

There just might be life on other planets, according to one astrobiologist. Nobel Prize winner Baruch Blumberg spoke about his field in front of a packed auditorium in Steinberg-Dietrich Hall. Blumberg said that even if life only originated on one planet, it could have moved to others via meteorites.

Award-winning writer Paul LaFarge introduced his audience to a metaphysical world of talking rabbits, boys gluing themselves to dead girls' bodies and women marrying chairs last night. Those gathered in the Kelly Writers House listened intently as they learned about Paul Poissel, the obscure 19th-century French writer who created these bizarre images in his novel The Facts of Winter, which LaFarge translated.