Thumbs Down to our Student Center McDonald’s. For years it has been depriving young, cash-strapped students from a full dollar menu. Look on the menu at the Student Center, and then compare it to one at any other McDonald’s. Only then will you realize that our Micky D’s is more like the Grinch that stole Christmas than the dollar-menuaires it claims to be. I know things are tough economically right now, but I really don’t see how it would lose money by offering the full dollar menu. Come on, Student Center McDonald’s, do your part during these tough times and change the menu. Help feed the starving, college students who wander aimlessly through the Student Center (and sometimes block the halls) in search of food. All they want is to be able to feed themselves for $3.09. Is that too much to ask?

Thumbs Up to the university for extending its offer of in-state tuition to students from Tennessee and Arkansas. SIUC has a larger cookie jar to pull from now, and it wouldn’t surprise me if in the coming years the campus will be hearing more y’alls and see more cowboy hats than’ we do now.’ Maybe we should go ahead and offer in-state tuition to the 44 other states not in our recruitment plan while we’re at it. If someone from Alaska wants to come all that way to southern Illinois for college, the least we could do is offer them in-state tuition.

Thumbs Down to the first home loss to Creighton since I’ve been in Carbondale. My perfect record has been tarnished and now stands at 4-1 all-time against CR8N when I’m in attendance at the SIU Arena. It was a day I thought would never come, but in the end even the magic of the old building wasn’t enough to help our young Salukis in a battle with a heated rival.

Thumbs Up to an arrest made last week in the two-year-old murder case of Falon Taylor, a mother of three who was killed Jan. 6, 2007, while visiting a friend. The investigation, one of Carbondale’s four open cold cases, is still ongoing as authorities continue to look for additional suspects. The other cases still open are the 1992 arson of the Pyramid Studio Apartments which killed five students and the murders of Connie Cole-Homes in 1996 and Ryan Livingston in 2006.

If you have any information about any of these cases you can contact the Crime Stoppers Tip Line at 618-549-2677.

Thumbs Down once again to Alex Rodriguez, whose admission and ensuing apology last week for using performance-enhancing drugs was laughable at best. Usually I want to believe athletes, as was the case for Roger Clemens, but when I heard A-Fraud’s interview last week I lost all respect for the guy.

My favorite part was when he said, ‘I felt an enormous amount of pressure. I was young. I was stupid. I was naive. To be quite honest, I don’t know exactly what substance I was guilty of using.’

Five years into your career and you still considered yourself young and na’iuml;ve? Sorry bud, you weren’t a rookie five years into your big-league career, but you did act like one when you did not know what you were putting into your body. Be ready to embrace the * that will be placed on any record of yours for a long, long time.

Fruth is a graduate student in curriculum and instruction.