The moment people around the world have been talking about for years will arrive in only 21 days, and university officials say everything on campus should make a smooth transition from 1999 to 2000.

After years of work and constant reassurance, Iowa State students have no reason to believe New Year’s Eve will have any more problems than any given Friday night.

Rabindra Mukerjea, assistant to ISU President Martin Jischke and leader of Y2K compliance efforts at ISU, said he is confident university computers are ready for the new year and should be protected against any “bugs” that may infiltrate systems around the world.

“We fulfilled the requirements before the end of September,” he said in Monday’s Daily. “We have been very busy for quite some time.”

ISU for once has lived up to its “Science and Technology” label by anticipating computer problems more than a decade ago and making changes early on.

“It became pretty clear that there was going to be a problem,” said Dorothy Lewis, associate director of the ISU Computation Center. “This was not something that came up at the end of the ’90s as an observation.”

University officials also have made extensive efforts to make sure the campus stays warm and bright.

Little work was necessary to make sure the utilities would be problem free, because most of those systems pre-date computer chip technology, which is a little scary in itself, yet at the same time comforting.

The University of Iowa and University of Northern Iowa also have whipped their campuses into Y2K compliance.

If something should go wrong, procedures are put in place to help prevent total chaos.

More than 50 university and Department of Public Safety staff will be patrolling the campus.

The Computation Center will have a “Y2K Command Center” in the Armory with facilities, telecommunications and security staff.

And a special Y2K hotline will be available at 296-2000 for anyone to call with questions or concerns until the end of January, or, in case of incident, even longer.

It oftentimes may be difficult to put all trust in the university, especially in matters of potential supernatural interference.

But anything that could go wrong due to computational error has been covered, and, if people are still worried, they should take on the attitude of President Jischke:

“If you’re not compliant now, it’s too late to worry about it.”

Iowa State Daily Editorial Board: Sara Ziegler, Greg Jerrett, Kate Kompas and Carrie Tett.