The only way to prevent undesirable incidents, such as Thursday night’s fiasco at the West Lagoon, is to devise safeguards after a careful examination of the events.

The university is in the midst of such a process, as was announced Friday by two NIU vice presidents. The two are conducting an “administrative review of actions by students and the police response.” This type of review could provide a valuable lesson on how to prevent similar future disturbances.

Hopefully, the investigation will go further than just a review. The information attained through the investigation should be put to use in an effort to create and maintain some programs and guidelines to be used, should a similar situation ever arise.

The university should consider implementing an aggressive campaign geared toward informing students about the illegality of such gatherings on university property. Such information could be made available through posting the rules in the residence halls and holding public forums between the University Police, the Residence Hall Association and all students.

Strict enforcement of such rules should follow. Resident Assistants could play a strong role in discouraging outdoor gatherings by expanding write-ups to include behavior done on all residence hall property, not just dorm rooms. Write-ups for a “party atmosphere” can be enforced outdoors as well, if the ingredients for such a party include alcohol.

After the establishment of such a policy, students might think twice about gathering in such a fashion, and police would not have to be called in to quell the situation.

The best time for information spreading to begin is at the onset of each semester, with special concentration given as soon as warm weather sets in. Police already are aware that outdoor gatherings are popular during spring weather.

Because there is no guarantee preventative measures would be 100 percent effective, the university also should look into creating a mandatory program to train university police in crowd control. With such training, perhaps the situation Thursday wouldn’t have gotten so far out of hand.

For now, the administration needs to look at what happened that night to clear up immediate problems currently facing them. After that review is complete, they should remain open to suggested long-term solutions.