I’m getting sick and tired of hearing about how our University is barely top-tier in things that don’t matter.Yeah, sure, everyone knows The U.S. News & World Report’s best colleges list calls our University top-tier. And now Trojan’s saying the same thing — only they used slightly different criteria.Yeah. Trojan condoms.Trojan released its 2008 Sexual Health Report Card last week, and LSU performed admirably. We didn’t quite make the top 10, but No. 12 ain’t bad — and if we employ the tiers used in the best colleges list, being 12th is comfortably top-tier.But here’s the truth: The University is only top-tier in U.S. News & World Report because Duquesne, Kansas State and Samford all tied with us for the lowest top-tier ranking. And as for Trojan, LSU’s move from No. 13 in 2007 to No. 12 in the 2008 rankings is offset by the fact that all but two of last year’s top-tier schools fell out of the top 12.”Student attitudes towards their health centers improved consistently between the 2007 and 2008 surveys,” Trojan said in a news release. Every category but one showed an improvement of approximately 3 percent.”So between average gains across the board and previous top-tier schools tanking, it’s obvious the University didn’t do much to improve. Everyone around us improved, while those ahead of us in 2007 top-tier crashed. And we still only gained one measly point.Our University has finally reached the pinnacle of success by doing next to nothing. So why stop now? If we keep doing nothing, we can move on from The U.S. News & World Report and Trojan to collegiate world domination, right?Wrong.Let’s not fool ourselves, guys. We need to stop resting on our laurels and accepting accolades for not doing anything. It’s time for us to do something, damn it.  Anything.The Trojan report has given me an idea of something each and every Tiger can do to actually earn top-tier status. Why should we settle for the bottom of top-tier status at lots of things when we can legitimately be No. 1 at something that isn’t football if we just roll up our sleeves and get to it?Here’s a fact: Anyone can not get a sexually transmitted disease.Anyone.And every University in the nation has at least a few students who have contracted sexually transmitted diseases — hell, according to the U.S. Center for Disease Control at least 50 percent of sexually active men and women contract genital HPV infection at some point.But it would take a truly special University to up those numbers. Statistically speaking, an 11 or 15 percent STD contraction rate looks unassuming — something to be corrected, sure, but intuition suggests this number feels just about right.Imagine if high school students saw the University’s STD contraction rate was between 99.87 percent and 100 percent. They’d be talking. Every pimply faced adolescent with dreams of a wonderful career building a real-life version of the Starship Enterprise would know — with almost 100 percent certainty — that LSU was the place to go when you absolutely need your cream whipped.Think about it — why would anyone with a 1600 on the SAT go to M.I.T. and earn a guaranteed place in the creative class when you can come to LSU, spend a night at Reggie’s and earn a lifetime of regret?Now, I’m not saying this would be easy. It wouldn’t be. The University would probably have to amend the Flagship Agenda to have a subsection dealing with aspirant STD contraction rates. They’d have to make graphs and slideshow presentations explaining where this would put us compared to other SEC schools.It’d be hard work. But instilling my generation with a can-do attitude, and American ingenuity is supposed to be hard work. We could be the next Greatest Generation if University students simply take their lives — and their partner’s lives — into their own hands.”Some people see things as they are and say why?” Bobby Kennedy once said. “I dream things that never were and say why not.”I know reaching our aspirational goals will be tough now that the Department of Residential Life took Kirby Smith Hall offline. Its elevator would’ve been a perfect living petri dish for the University’s grossest student culture. Well, desperate times call for desperate measures, and everyone has to pitch in and shoulder their share of desperation.Chartwells and University Dining Services can help out and taint our food with only a handful more complaints than they get now. The Residence Hall Association can do programming for on-campus students, performing plays about which bars Tigers need to visit so we meet our monthly contraction quotas. Even Student Government can get in on the action by passing a sternly worded resolution urging and requesting students refrain from having safe sex. If SG President Colorado Robertson really cares about the Flagship Agenda, he’ll know to avoid the veto stamp.The Athletic Department can even make T-shirts. Nothing says Tiger Pride like a limited edition “I came to Death Valley and all I got was a mouthful of disease” T-shirt.I’m not asking for much. I just think the next time University students have the opportunity to play carpenter, they need to think long and hard about whether they really need to wear their work gloves.—-Contact Neal Hebert at [email protected]