Something must be done about the University health care crisis.You’ve been to the Student Health Center. You know what you see each time a student enters the door.Long lines filled with coughing and sniffling students. Graying professors loudly braying about socialism while they wait for their flu shots. Pajama-clad students milling around confused, hoping against hope that this is the day they can get a medically excused absence.Oh, the humanity.Countless cartridges of ink have been used in past editions of The Daily Reveille where students bemoan the dearth of services offered, the waiting involved in seeing one of the mental health specialists employed by the University and the difficulty of getting in to see a doctor. Don’t get me wrong — it’s not all bad. “The past year has been a dynamic and productive one for the LSU Student Health Center,” Health Center Director Art Goulas wrote in the 2007 Health Center Annual Report. “We received approval for a much needed student health fee increase, which allowed us to continue to offer the quality and scope of services for which we are known.”But in times of crisis bold leadership is necessary. Our administrator insect overlords will not save us. University students must turn elsewhere for leadership.Yeah, Student Government, I’m talking to you.I don’t want the usual. I don’t need a resolution urging and requesting the University administration fix things up so a debonaire journalist like myself can just walk in and get Lortab prescriptions and a laughing-gas-filled asthma inhaler no questions asked — though that would be nice. And I don’t need a card that lets me cut to the front of any line at the Health Center — though if there is such a card it can be delivered to my box at B-16 Hodges Hall.No, I think it’s time SG put its money where its mouth is. It’s time to spend first and ask questions later — and with a little bit of money the Student Senate can solve this crisis.I’m not advocating spending more on personnel. That’s prohibitively expensive, a waste of student fees and so 1930s. We have to decrease the lines at the Health Center by driving away students, who — lets face it — don’t need to be there as much as I do. I’m not a sociologist. I don’t pretend to understand things like facts, statistics or what a health care crisis actually is. But what I do understand is people — what makes them tick, what they want and what they watch on television.You know what people don’t like?Clowns.I don’t know about you, but I see an SG opportunity like no other.For the low, low price $21.17 per spool at Steve’s Blinds & Wallpaper, SG can buy wallpaper decorated with tiny clowns.Imagine you’re a student at the Health Center waiting to see a therapist. You’re angry, you’re depressed, and you’re taking up valuable seating space that a columnist like me sure would like to have. Under the current system, you’d be able to sit quietly until you get the help you’re seeking. Under my plan, the clowns that surround you would taunt you until you left the center in horror.Advantage: me. Because nobody likes clowns. Parents don’t, men don’t, women don’t and midgets don’t. Most importantly for us at the University, kids don’t like them either — and we all know the only difference between a kid and a college student is an alcohol problem.Disliking clowns is ingrained in us. Contrary to “popular” belief, clowns upset us when they spray us with seltzer. And trust me — the best way to drive someone away is to make them unhappy or afraid.Paul Salkovskis, a clinical director of Britain’s Maudsley Hospital Centre for Anxiety Disorders and Trauma, explained the power of the clown to evoke fear in a Jan. 16 interview with the BBC. Salkovskis noted in the feature — “Why clowns are scary?” — that the fear has less to do with clowns than what clowns represent.”People are typically frightened by things which are wrong in some way, wrong in a disturbingly unfamiliar way,” Salkovskis said. “It is almost certainly not a reaction to clowns, but we are sensitive to things which are extraordinary, particularly sensitive when we are young.”SG Speaker Pro-Tempore Drew Prestridge seems convinced using clown wallpaper could be successful.”Ronald McDonald has always creeped me out,” Prestridge said.Prestridge is right. No one wants to feel like one of the guys in Stephen King’s “It” — and University students don’t want to stay awake each night in their dorm rooms muttering “Can’t sleep — clowns will eat me” for hours on end.I know sometimes I come up with crazy schemes, and I know sometimes I’m viewed as a less-than-credible messenger of truth on campus. After all, there’s nothing more dangerous to the University status quo than an American Indian who asks questions.But I should be judged not by the color of my skin but by the content of my character. The silence in response to my calls to action has been deafening.I blame caller ID. So color me shocked when I borrowed a phone and finally reached the SG Speaker of the Senate Ben Clark. When I asked Clark about the feasibility of purchasing wallpaper, he gave me a virtual all-clear.”There’s nothing that says we can’t,” Clark said.So get on it, SG. It’s not like it’s that hard to write a bill.—-Contact Neal Hebert at [email protected]