Many people drink their water as it comes, however, for the few picky drinkers, many drink the best or none at all, despite that hydration is a key part of health and learning. Finding the best water on campus is something not many students try but when they succeed they have with them the best resource to fuel not only their learning, but their life: good water.
After the pandemic, schools implemented new non-contact water fountains in order to reduce Covid-19’s spread. Students talk about their journey to find the best water on campus for hydration and the effect the new fountains have had on it.
“At least twice a week someone says ‘I can’t do this right now I have a headache,” science teacher Caleb Elson said. “First thing I ask is ‘how much water have you had to drink today’ and normally it’s none,” Elson said.”Keeping your brain hydrated is important. You can’t have education without water.”
For this reason the school provides accessible water throughout the campus with water fountains which help students who forgot to fill up their bottle.
“Water fountains are important so people can hydrate,” senior Christian Olguin said. “There’s many people out there who run out of water and there’s especially not a lot of people who carry a dollar on them to buy one, so it helps a lot.”
The fountains are also important because they encourage students to bring reusable bottles instead of single-use disposable bottles which helps fight plastic waste.
“I like that people are likely to fill up their containers as opposed to buying,”environmental teacher Britney Synder said. “There’s a little counter too that shows how many water bottles you’re saving from going into the environment.”
Despite all these benefits, what’s stopping most students from using the fountains is that they each have a different quality of water which sometimes can prevent students from using them all in general.
“It’s a hit or miss,” senior Ryan Edward said. “Some of the water sometimes tastes pretty bad. It has this chemical or almost toothpaste flavor to it. But most of the water here is good, if it was a hot day I wouldn’t mind drinking that water.”
The coldest fountains are few and far between but after finding many of them, students and teachers have noticed a pattern for where they are hidden.
“It seems like the best water fountains are the ones by the locker rooms right by the athletic stuff,” Elson said. “I’m not sure if that is due to the athletes being more likely to hydrate often because of the workouts they do.”
Even though the difference in water seems like a nonissue, possibly changing the fountains to motivate more students to stay hydrated can help them in so many ways.
“I think that flavored options would make the fountains better,” senior Jacob Hammet said “Kidding! I say make them colder overall. I don’t want to say ice water but cooler water is nicer, especially in the Texas heat.”
