You’re sitting in a three-hour lecture in Doudna Hall. You forgot your water bottle and are feeling quite parched. No matter. On break, you’ll head down to the vending machines and grab a water. Your leg shakes with the impatience of waiting to finally sate your thirst. The wait is agonizing.

Finally, your professor calls for a 10-minute break. You don’t waste any time snatching your wallet and running down the steps. You can’t seem to run fast enough to reach your liquid savior. You arrive at the vending machines. Your eyes hungrily scan the options. Coffee, energy drinks, soda, milk even? Where’s the water? This can’t be. You scan the options again. But alas, it’s simply not there. You slide down the glass of the machine, forlorn and defeated. Your thirst remains unquenched.

Have you fallen victim to the blatant lack of water on campus? Some might say, “just use the water fountains,” but COVID is not so much a distant memory. The thought of using water fountains has never been appealing, even less so now in times of COVID-19.

Students are busy, always in motion and have a lot on their plate. Sometimes it takes every brain cell to remember to put a coat on in the morning. Water bottles are easily forgotten in the haste to make it to class on time. Without a water bottle, they can’t utilize the water bottle refill station. Without water in the vending machines, students are forced to choose an unhealthy option they otherwise wouldn’t pick, or continue on their day, day dreaming of delicious, pure, cold water.

Doudna Hall is not the only building without water in the vending machines. Specifically in the Liberal Arts and Humanities buildings, there seems to be a lack of want for healthy, hydrated students. Ottensman Hall also only carries soda and energy drinks in their machines, although, if you were to head over to Busby Hall, you will find both plain and flavored water options on the third floor. Is there a secret vendetta against the health of LAE students? Do only STEM students deserve to be hydrated?

UWP has some angry, dehydrated students to answer to.