Oh No, Where’s the H2o?

Pierce students react to some non-funtioning drinking fountains

BY SOPHIE WARD Copy Editor and reporter

California is experiencing drought weather, but that doesn’t mean Pierce College students should be unable to quench their thirsts.

Since the start of the fall semester, almost all drinking fountains on campus have been shut off and are unavailable.

In the Pierce courtyard, there are two working water bottle filling stations and four working drinking fountains. But drinking fountains in the Village and near classrooms are still off.

The Los Angeles Community College District’s Director of College Facilities

Paul Nieman and other employees have yet to publicly address the situation or share with The Roundup their plan of action to resolve it.

Pierce student Sammy Johnson believes having accessible drinking fountains is beneficial because they are free to students.

“An alternative would be to get water from the vending machine, but the vending machine cost [money],” Johnson said. “A water fountain is much cheaper.”

Pierce student Nicole Burns said purchasing water from the student store is also an option, but can be costly.

“Since so many water fountains are closed or shut down, it’s harder to get a drink, and you have to go to the student store to pay for it,” Burns said. “Water fountains provide free water. It’ll be a lot more convenient if more water fountains were open.”

Pierce student Maia Villalobos believes water should be accessible to everyone and students should not have to walk far on campus to find it.

“The thing with water is that it should be accessible for everyone,” Villalobos said.

“It should be free,” Villalobos said. “You shouldn’t have to walk so far or go out of your way to buy water.”

Since so many drinking fountains are out of service, Villalobos has started bringing an extra water bottle from home. She finds that having accessible water bottle filling stations can encourage students to bring their reusable bottles from home.

“If you imagine it, it’s like, at first when it was closed, it’s just like ‘OK, I need to make sure to bring water if I have enough.’ Like now, I just fill up my bottle from that one station I found.”

Once more drinking fountains are available for use, Johnson said he may consider bringing his own reusable bottles to campus.

“I have reusable bottles at home that I for one would have definitely been more willing to bring to school if we had water fountains.”

Villalobos said the benefits of having more working drinking fountains on campus extend beyond just benefiting students.

“I feel like it would be beneficial towards the planet to stop wasting plastic and save your money,” Villalobos said. “Overall, it’s very convenient.” sward.roundupnews@gmail.com institutions have continued to expand resources and assistance.

“We have 5,000 undocumented undergraduate and graduate students across our campuses and we’ve provided about $100 million in aid across that landscape,” Drake said. “We can see the value in providing higher education to the broadest array of citizens within our communities .”

The second day for Undocumented Student Action week focused on “Equitable Student-Centered Design to Ensure Undocumented Student Success”.

Assistant Professor of Biology and Curriculum Audit Coordinator at Long Beach City College Priscilla Bravo Arias said the curriculum audit is a voluntary program created by faculty to redesign coursework through an equity lens.

Arias said the program has been a campus-wide effort with instructors having a list for completion of the audit. Instructors can share their list of resources with students through the Canvas shell or by implementation through the course curriculum.

Student engagement, communication strategies, and culturally response assignments are other things that Arias and the curriculum audit program focus on.

“Our students are intersectional beings, just like we are,” Arias said. “It’s a very diverse community, so all students can see themselves reflected in the material, and that helps to validate that students belong in the course and college setting. College was not created for a particular group of people but for all individuals.”