By Josh Siatkowski | Staff Writer

We’re lucky to be at a university with such an extensive list of health care services. So, with all these services, why is it so hard to find a tissue around here?

Baylor’s Health Services Center, located on the second floor of the McLane Student Life Center, offers a lot more coverage than your high school nurse’s office. It’s a one-stop shop that provides vaccines, tests, therapy and even minor surgical procedures.

As comforting as it is to know that there’s a place on campus for me if I ever need to suture up a wound or get tested for mono, it’s also a little infuriating. You’d think that with these higher-order health services in operation, something as simple as blowing your nose would be the least of your concerns.

But for some reason, it’s not.

I understand that this is the most first-world of first-world problems, and there are a lot of solutions to this problem. You can (and should) always buy necessities like tissues before moving in — or at The Store if you run out. In a pinch, you can always suck it up and blow into a paper towel, a napkin or some toilet paper.

Trust me, I’ve tried these solutions, and I know they all get the job done. But when I receive an email about the thousands of dollars being transferred from my college fund or take a look at our $266 million football stadium, it gets hard to ignore the scratchiness of a Baylor-branded napkin on my upper lip every time I blow my nose.

Also, because Texas has higher-than-average temperatures, a diverse arsenal of plants can release their armies of pollen into the air year-round. With this extended allergy season, runny noses and stuffy heads are even more common here at Baylor than they would be at a school in another region.

I know there are ways we can get tissues on campus. But the last thing I want to do when I’m fighting a runny nose in Moody Memorial Library is to get up and go to the Bill Daniel Student Center to use dining dollars — or worse, my own money — to get some relief.

So Baylor, please humor your students who aren’t used to the Texas pollen, and put some tissue boxes in the most frequented buildings and classrooms on campus. And I’m sure even those who don’t suffer from bad allergies could agree that it would be nice to not have their studies disrupted by the sniffles of stuffy classmates.

Whether it happens or not, I still stand by this: If our campus provides surgical procedures and health exams, there shouldn’t be an issue with providing Kleenex every once in a while.