Bravo to the life of Tom Dillon, the voice of ASU athletics for 18 years. Dillon, a play-by-play broadcaster who won Arizona Sportscaster of the Year 17 times and was set to call the ASU-UA game this Saturday, died unexpectedly on Monday night. He was 65. Dillon’s presence in the Valley exceeded just his voice; he was, among many other things, a part of the Flight for Life program, an organization of pilots who donate time flying across Arizona to transport blood. Dillon’s charity work and benevolent public profile is just part of what endeared him to the ASU community. He will be missed tremendously.
Boo to the Arizona Board of Regents' wildly inconsistent ride through Thursday’s meeting at ASU. In determining 2009-2010 tuition rates for the three state universities, the regents did the right thing by heeding the schools’ call for financial help — or at least they did for ASU and NAU. While ASU President Michael Crow and NAU President John Haeger had their plans accepted, UA President Robert Shelton got a raw deal. In applying a philosophy — that the increase should only cover cost-of-living increases — to UA’s tuition that they did not apply to the other universities, ABOR sent an odd, incoherent message. Unfortunately for UA, this message will cost them several million dollars of much-needed additional tuition revenue when compared to Shelton’s proposal.
Bravo — kind of — to the ASU Foundation’s hush-hush new multifaceted campaign, which hopes to determine the global issues ASU should use its vast pool of resources to address. The project launched its hyper-goofy Web site on Tuesday. The Web site’s current configuration leaves a lot to be desired (It’s reminiscent of kids writing letters to Santa asking for the things they want.) and has us wondering just how innovative this campaign will ultimately be. Next time, ASU Foundation, remember this basic lesson: Turning in a half-done project early is not as good of an idea as turning in a completed project on time.
Boo to a minor collision that occurred near 24th and Washington streets on Tuesday morning. This accident, between a sedan and — drum roll, please — a Metro light rail car thankfully resulted in no injuries; however, what this event represented happens to cause us much pain. You see, we envision this entire light rail system’s safety situation as being more or less like a domino rally. Now, the first domino has dropped. Don’t become the next one.
Bravo to our UA counterpart, the Arizona Daily Wildcat — for making us look so damn good this semester. We’ve kept our not-so-nice words on the inside for a while, but in the spirit of the Duel in the Desert — taking place on the gridiron in Tucson on Saturday evening — we decided we should let our readers know what’s been published down in the Old Pueblo. The Wildcat, among other blunders, printed the date on Sept. 11 as “September !!” They have faced threats of a boycott after they published a comic with the N-word in it — the day after Barack Obama was elected president. Oh yes, and they also had to correct at least four news stories because the renegade reporter behind them was found to be fabricating sources. All in all, this was not the finest semester for our kitty counterparts. In fact, we'd say that their constant slip-ups have taken them out of the running for the title of "Arizona's World-class Student Newspaper." Now, let us all hope that the football team makes UA’s football team look as silly as the Wildcat has made themselves look this fall. If they can’t, no worries; it was a really tall task to begin with.
