After a peaceful football weekend in State College, police officers tell us that the patrollers on Beaver Avenue rooftops, the mounted police and the presence of the Department of Corrections bus could be familiar sights to Penn State students.

It seems that Beaver Canyon will be the host to the same kind of gathering every football weekend till the end of the semester.

With about 200 officers in the streets over the weekend, police said they found that keeping the peace wasn't a problem.

During the rest of the semester, they will be analyzing the risk factors for riot each weekend and staffing the streets accordingly.

Though some students may feel this is overkill and that the community doesn't trust them to mix sports, alcohol and the weekend in a safe and mature fashion, perhaps these measures, though somewhat drastic, are necessary.

After the disturbances in the Beaver Canyon area last spring, as well as the infamous Arts Fest riot of 1998, something should be done to keep the rowdier members of the Penn State community in check.

As long as the police, State College residents and Penn State students deal with the situation in the way that they did this weekend, however, we hope the problems dissipate and that we may be able to walk down Beaver Avenue without seeing police officers at every step.

But there were a lot of things the police did right in this situation. There were no incidents of police being over-threatening to passers-by and both residents and officers seemed want to avoid trouble.

There were also alternative activities available to keep people busy after the game.

The Fifth Quarter servants sponsored activities for those interested, something the police said kept people calmer during the course of the evening.

Free music and refreshments in the streets of State College are sure ways to keep at least some of the students from tearing apart the community. Penn State also sponsored activities that kept people out of trouble during the night.

These are the best ways to keep people from "rioting" on the weekends — have places for them to go and things for them to do.

Of course, letting people see that the police are perched all around them probably was an added factor in keeping the peace this past football weekend as well.

Though it's sad that Penn State students are facing a year of week-end babysitters dressed in police uniforms, maybe if students can keep themselves from destructive behavior on Friday and Saturday nights, we won't have to deal with this kind of supervision in the future.