Here’s a few dos and don’ts the Athletics Department should issue for the next football team that decides to visit Western.

Do bring a safe so you can protect your personal belongings like cash and CDs.

Do bring your own security guards to watch after your locker room.

Don’t assume your belongings will be safe.

Don’t leave anything close to the mysterious back door.

After all, the next team to visit Western wouldn’t want to end up like Kentucky State University.

On the field, KSU’s football team got spanked. In the locker room, they got robbed.

At some point during the game, $825 in cash and CDs were stolen from the team’s locker room.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time a visiting team has gotten swindled. In 1999, three Tennessee State University players reported wallets and jewelry stolen from the locker room.

TSU coaches said they locked the locker room with keys the university gave them.

There were no signs of forced entry.

Western’s Web site tells people to “Expect the Best.” But so far the Western hasn’t proved to be the best host.

Already, visitors have to scramble around our campus to avoid construction and to find a parking spot, but now on top of that, they have to fear they’ll get robbed.

This is not only bad public relations for the university, but it’s downright rude. Once may be an accident, but twice is ridiculous.

Western needs to find a way to secure the belongings of campus visitors, whether it’s a football team or a prospective student.

Administrators must stop assuming that everyone is honest.

The Athletics Department and campus police both need to take on this responsibility.

The first step should be finding out how many doors there are to the locker room. Earlier this week, it didn’t appear Capt. Eugene Hoofer knew how many entrances there were.

“Evidently, there’s a back door,” he told a Herald reporter.

In both instances, everyone said the doors were locked, which might mean that someone who wasn’t supposed to be in the locker room had a key.

Forget trying to track down all those keys.

Replace the locks and start fresh.

And lastly, if there are two doors, there needs to be two police officers guarding them. Guarding only one door obviously doesn’t work.

For the unfortunate members of the KSU football team, we’d like to apologize on behalf of Western.

The university was obviously not concerned enough to protect your valuables, even though there have been problems in the past. We hope they offered condolences, or replaced the goods.

We’re sorry. You deserve better.

This editorial represents the majority opinion of the Herald’s 11-member board of student editors.