Thumbs Up to NCAA March Madness. By today, most of your brackets are either busted or you’re still in contention for the annual tournament pool. With the Salukis not playing in any post season tournament this year, our only connections to the big dance this year are former coaches Bruce Weber (Illinois) and Matt Painter (Purdue) and their teams are heading different directions. Ole Bruce’s team got ousted in the first round by Western Kentucky and Matt Painter’s Boilermakers are moving on to the Sweet 16. When the only Saluki left to root for in the tournament is the old coach, it really makes you appreciate that run the Dawgs had going before this year. I hope Dillard and company can find the glass slipper and bring the Salukis back to the Big Dance next season. I’m pretty sure that old building has enough left for one more magical season before it gets a facelift.

Thumbs Up to the ‘Pimp My Ride’ style auto show that hit Carbondale this weekend. With the Players Ball in town, the average rim length on vehicles in the county fluctuated to more than 24 inches and one could clearly hear a bass line coming from more than a mile away. I’m pretty sure I even saw a fleet of Cutlass Supremes, each painted a different color of the rainbow. It was like watching giant Skittles drive through town the whole weekend. At least with all the West Coast Customs cars in town this weekend, the attention will be off of those of us that drive more low profile vehicles or ‘hoopties.’

Thumbs Down to the lack of women administrators on campus. What is this, the Good Old Boys Club? Augusta National Golf Course? Is SIUC really one big men’s room? It’s never good when our university is labeled as the worst example of gender discrimination among public universities by an expert in the subject as reported by the Daily Egyptian last Monday. At least the university has recognized that they need to improve on this so it looks as if the men’s room at SIUC could be remodeling to include a women’s restroom as well.

Thumbs Down to the Undergraduate Student Government plan to use the misallocated money from 2007 that went to GPSC to fund book scholarships for students. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not debating the merit of the plan, but isn’t there a better use for the $90,000 or so than funding a few book scholarships a year? What if that money paid for $90,000 worth of books to be brought back to the library? Would that not benefit more students than three a year till the money runs out? We could even use the funds to hire student workers to move the books over to Morris Library, which would provide some direct aid to struggling students.’

USG, you are the SIUC student’s federal government. It’s like what Spock said, ‘The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.’ If your intention is to help provide aid to financially strapped students, than give them more stimulus than what you are planning.

Fruth is a graduate student in curriculum and instruction.