The one place with tighter security in Illinois than the Holmes Student Center yesterday only could have been Marion Federal Penitentiary. The difference, though, was that Marion’s guards try to keep people in and NIU’s University Police were trying to keep people out.

It’s almost laughable that the university officials wound up protecting the Board of Regents from student activists who threatened to protest—but didn’t.

Because of student protesters’ threats to “shut down” the Regents meetings at NIU, officials practically declared the student center a police state, enlisting the services of about 20 UPs to secure the Sky Room fortress. Officers stood sentry in the student center’s lobby and each of the elevators, regulating the passage of Regent and university staff members and later a limited number of meeting spectators.

The unprecedented security gave the impression that university officals might have been expecting a protest equaling the magnitude of a major military coup.

As “the next best thing to being there,” an alternative means for observing the meeting’s procedures was created for those not fortunate enough to gain access to the Regents’ stronghold. Three TVs were provided in Carl Sandburg Auditorium telecasting live the proceedings for interested individuals’ viewing pleasure—all one of them.

As a result of the elaborate, but ultimately unnecessary security measures, NIU might have given new meaning to the phrase: “Better safe than sorry.”