It’s midterm season again.
You can always rely on October to deliver tests, stress, and an overwhelmingly full library. Some rely on copious amounts of coffee and energy drinks to get them through the night, while others blast music to keep them awake.
Whatever the tactics are, stress is a guarantee. It should be a well-known fact that our bodies require extra resources to properly function under stress; proper water intake is crucial for maintaining homeostasis and avoiding hospital visits.
Like many others, I have found myself staying up late in the student centre, cramming fish taxonomy and memorizing various signal transduction pathways. Late at night I’ve walked downstairs to have a drink from a water fountain only to find that the fountain is inaccessible, hidden behind a wall inside the closed Gracie’s Cafe. This happens to be the only fountain in the student centre outside of the fitness centre, and for some reason it is only available for use from Monday through Friday, from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm. This is certainly more than enough for most of the people employed at the student centre, but it is rather useless for students that study during the evening.
I decided to investigate how many academic buildings on campus have water fountains. There are two water fountains in Crabtree, one on the first floor and a second one in the psychology department. Hart Hall also has two water fountains, one on the first floor, and one on the second; same goes for Avard-Dixon. Dunn and Flemington both have only one water fountain on the ground floor. However, the fountain in Flemington does not even work. Barclay, unfortunately, does not have any water fountains. The library has one water fountain on the first floor for filling water bottles and a drinking one on the third floor.
In total, I’ve counted eleven water fountains in academic buildings on campus, including the library. This amounts to one water fountain per approximately 200 students. However, consider the following: academic buildings usually close by 11:00 pm; the library closes at 10:45 pm at the latest. The student centre is open the latest, closing around midnight from Sunday to Wednesday and usually by 3:00 am on the weekends. It turns out that there are no usable water fountains on campus after 11:00 pm. It seems quite ridiculous to place the only water fountain in the student centre in Gracie’s, making it useless most of the time.
I urge the administration to look into this issue before somebody’s health is compromised.
