You can’t run with the big horses if you’re going to be playing with the ponies.

That’s the message Student Association President Preston Came and SA Speaker Michael Starzec should have learned from their aborted attempt at protesting against the Board of Regents Thursday.

The protest was doomed from word one. Starzec initially painted a sensational picture of the protest, even promising the protesters would block the Pheasant Room when the Regents attempted to eat lunch.

However, when Came, student Regent James Mertes and Judicial Director Larry Bolles came down against the protest’s form, Starzec quickly changed his tune, saying his comments about a grandiose student uprising were merely tongue-in-cheek.

When it came time to start the protest, only a handful of students were present, so Starzec grabbed a microphone and started joking around, further making a mockery of the protest as well as a fool of himself. SA Vice President John Quilico didn’t help matters any, saying he was prepared to get arrested. Sorry John, you hardly did anything at the protest that anyone noticed.

However, the speakers at the protest did raise one valid point. Where the heck were the students? Out of NIU’s 25,000 students, only about 30 showed up. This only proves once again that NIU is indeed a “hotbed of rest.”

It’s a shame that NIU is so mediocre it can’t even get a protest right.