Whenever you get out of your local, overly chlorinated recreational pool, you may want to hop into a shower to get washed off and come out feeling much cleaner.
Now try that same strategy at San José State’s recreational pool and you will leave the shower feeling like a dry rock.
My face gets unbelievably dry, while my hair turns into straw.
When I hopped into the showers around a week ago in the Spartan Recreation and Aquatic Center, I was doused in water that tasted and smelled like sewage.
For a second I stood there with a frown, staring at the wall like I was an old cartoon character breaking the fourth wall before quickly stepping out and turning off the shower.
The San José Water company supplies water to SJSU, according to its website.
San José state uses groundwater, according to the most recent San José Water quality report.
The ground water that is used at SJSU has higher traces of inorganic materials in its water compared to primarily mountain surface water and valley water.
The ground water that is used at SJSU also has higher trace amounts of radionuclides and volatile organic chemicals compared to the other two water supplies, according to the same quality report.
Now this water does seem safe to drink even if it tastes a little funky, but that combined with the school’s lack of steps taken to fix broken water sources on campus doesn’t make me happy.
It’s not just the showers that absolutely reek, the water fountains water tastes like cement.
As I am writing this, 30 feet from me is a water fountain that has had a bad filtration system for the last four months, leading to the water being practically undrinkable.
Everyday I walk by the fountain with a glimmer of hope that the blinking red light under filter status will have changed, but unfortunately my wishes haven’t come true yet.
Now I will admit that this is a very first-world problem to have, but I pay about $4,500 a semester and I’ll be damned if I don’t have some free, good-quality water to drink.
While there is bottled water in on-campus stores, that shaves around $2 to $3 from your account with every purchase.
Instead of having students pay so much for clean water, maybe they could follow Trader Joe’s moral compass and sell water for less than a dollar.
As the temperature picks up, these water fountains will be used more frequently by students thus spotlighting the broken water fountain.
To hit a third nail on the head, I have also found myself grossed out by the sink water in the bathroom.
On a couple of occasions the water has come out white and frothy for a few minutes before returning back to a semi-normalish state.
In Dwight Bentel Hall (DBH) there are four active water fountains, with two of them being newer with filtration systems that tell you if the filter is active and how many bottles of water have been saved.
The fountain with the sensor downstairs doesn’t show if the filter is active, while the one upstairs shows a bad filtration system.
For a campus that just opened a new AI center and is innovating for the future, maybe they should take a step back and focus on having clean water.
