Boo to the new speed cameras on highways statewide. Sure, the budget could use some money, but this is not the way to be doing it. The problems are plentiful: it will create unsafe situations with speeding cars slamming on the breaks when the vans come into sight, it will not flash the equally dangerous under-the-speed-limit drivers and it will not take into account the driving safety tactic of going with the flow of traffic. But the state will have nothing of those arguments, so sadly, we only have one word of advice to give to our fellow drivers: Smile.
Bravo to the Arizona Board of Regents for putting a cap on tuition increases. Though it sucks having to pay any more than we already do, especially when it pays for the ability of the University to add more students to campus in the future (something that, by the way, will only further devalue our degree in a saturated job market), it could certainly be much worse. Because ABOR kept our best interest in mind, President Crow now cannot ask for more than a 5 percent increase for us, and with new students facing a maximum 10.6 percent increase, that’s not a bad place to be in.
Boo to our positivity. Between campus crime dropping, tuition increases getting capped, large-scale voter registration drives, Safety Escort Service expanding their operations, soccer going on a 7-game unbeaten streak and football not losing, we have had a tough time finding anything to get upset about this week. OK, so a week of glass-half-full thinking is not necessarily a bad thing, but it makes it awfully difficult to get this editorial done. Sorry, sunshine, but weeks like this give us two choices — rename this section under the monumentally lame title “Bravos & Bravos,” or get our complaint on — and it’s an easy decision. With that said, what’s our goal for next week, you ask? Be so ornery that we even can turn water into whine.
Bravo to Sarah Palin. As if she hasn’t provided enough fodder for us already, the Alaskan governor has won us over with her latest confession — where she gets her news. Asked by Katie Couric which specific newspapers and magazines she reads, Palin said, "Um, all of them, any of them that have been in front of me all these years." You know what that means, right? She reads The State Press! Though we are disappointed she has not signed up for our Twitter service, nor written any letters to the editor, we’re thrilled to have her readership. Would Obama or Biden read our paper? We think not. They’re probably too busy doing things like watching their daughters around boys and listing off bunches of Supreme Court cases. Gentlemen, if you would only read this paper, we’d tell you to step it up.
