Undercover failures — or not. Twice in a row, a News reporter has entered a contest in order to report on it — and won. First Frances Sawyer ’12 became one of Yale’s new mascots; then Lauren Rosenthal ’12 was chosen to model for Trailblazer. No word yet on whether a reporter plans to infiltrate the Ward 1 aldermanic race.

A dark angel comes to New Haven. Jessica Alba was spotted on campus over the weekend. Students flocked to the popular actress for autographs as she left the Berkeley dining hall. One suite of girls in Bingham briefly played host to Alba and her husband, Cash Warren ’01, who once lived in the suite.

The celebrity watch continued when the Ex!t Players performed their 25th anniversary show in Sudler Hall on Saturday night. Actor Fran Kranz ’05 from the television series “The Dollhouse” performed in the show, along with dozens of other Ex!t Players alumni.

Flip-flopper? Recipients of an e-mail from Ward 1 aldermanic candidate Mike Jones ’11 with the subject line “Free Claire’s Cake” were disappointed upon opening the e-mail to find that there was in fact “definitely no free cake,” as Jones put it. Instead, Jones said they could sign up to support his campaign outside the Saybrook dining hall.

Finding the silver lining to Friday’s hockey loss, a sophomore in Davenport collected 12 of his friends’ tickets to Saturday’s NCAA East Regional final after Friday’s upset had rendered the tickets useless to Eli hockey fans. The student sold the tickets in Bridgeport on Saturday afternoon and returned to Yale $350 richer.

Community Service Week concluded yesterday when 150 Yalies visited 13 different service sites within the New Haven community. The volunteers were back on campus by 1 p.m. to enjoy the weather.

Although the weather took a turn for the worse, runners were not deterred from participating in Julia’s Run For Children on Cross Campus yesterday. The run is an annual charity event to commemorate Julia Rusinek ’00, who died in July 1999 of an undetected heart condition.

Michael Barr ’87 LAW ’92, a former Treasury official, was chosen Saturday by President Barack Obama to serve as assistant secretary for financial institutions. If confirmed, Barr will take on the weighty responsibility of confronting the economic downturn.

Don’t “fail” to switch from credit/D/fail to a letter grade by 5 p.m. today.

This day in Yale history
1977 Judy Dixon, head coach of women’s tennis, resigned and filed a suit against the University for sexual discrimination.

Submit ideas to Cross Campus
crosscampus@yaledailynews.com