OPINION: Clear minds, clean water

By LilyBelle Cogliano

I like to think of myself as a water fanatic. If you’re anything like me, you are very particular with your water and know when the water's purity is off. My roommate and I take it upon ourselves to always have bottles and jugs of water in our room, because no matter what, we treat the water dispenser as the last resort for hydration. Something so accessible around campus and so beneficial to the students in theory would be substantially helpful towards us, however, not when the filter status is always shining yellow.

There are three color options on the Stonehill water dispenser filters: green, yellow, and red. Green indicates it is a working filter, orange-ish yellow indicates that it needs to be changed and that its effectiveness is dwindling, and red (of course) means that the filter needs immediate replacement.

I’ve found that one out of five times that I find myself getting water from a water dispenser, I’m heavily discouraged to see that the water filter lights are any color but green. Sink water is ruled out as an option because it tastes indistinguishably like sink, and Brita water is only an option when you have access to one. This leaves the parched and dehydrated student with one solution: drink the gross bubbler water. 

When asking Stonehill College student Nate Ward about this situation, he said, “what’s a guy gotta do to get some clean water?” He himself has faced this very issue, with a very accessible water fountain in his building. However, it doesn’t feel as accommodating when there's doubt that the water isn’t clean.

Students like Nate will opt not to stay hydrated in this case, which is not beneficial to their health and well-being, especially in academic and sports settings. 

Many students at Stonehill are still very parent-reliant, especially for getting their water and food. These students also may not have access to a vehicle on campus to go buy these provisions. Therefore, they rely heavily on the school for these things, which isn’t good when the school isn’t providing healthy and clean provisions. 

In theory, a student could buy water from their vending machines, however, many vending machines on campus are not cold but room temperature/warm. This makes the students face the dilemma of either being parched or succumbing to drinking lukewarm water. All these issues could be avoided, however, if the school simply provided the clean hydration that the students require to thrive. 

In addition to the lack of filter status in many of the water fountains, there is also a lack of updated and modern water fountains in general. For example, in the Corr Hall dorm building, there are only two water fountains in the whole building, which are severely outdated without a water bottle filler or a filtering application for the water.

Another student, Anna Robertson, said, “I suffer from constant migraines and am always in need of water, which I find very difficult to acquire when our building has such outdated and unusable water bubblers.”

Anna faces an issue that surely many other Stonehill students do as well. 

I’ve taken it upon myself to take special attention to the water fountains in many buildings on campus as I’ve passed by, which are about 80% of the time shining a yellow/orange light. This light indicates that the water's cleanliness and filter are starting to degrade, hence being in need of a new water filter change. The filters could be this way because no one is informing the Stonehill staff to change them, or simply because they are not being proactive enough to keep up with it. Either way, it is not beneficial for students not to make sure that they are getting the healthiest water option available to them. 

My advice to Stonehill: maybe take a lap around the school and make sure that all of their water systems are updated and functioning correctly. There hasn’t been a case yet where I’ve encountered a shining red filter status on a bubbler, however, I wouldn’t be surprised if that is the direction that the water quality is going towards.