Water fountains dying out on Canadian campuses
Tue, 2008-09-09 04:12
#1
Water fountains dying out on Canadian campuses
Tue, 2008-09-09 04:12
#2
Don't know if anyone paid much attention a few short months ago when Concordia University here in Montreal fell all over themselves touting the 40th anniversary of the Simone de Beauvoir Institute and the department of women's studies. It is one of the best women's studies programs in the country and is affiliated with the international institute.
How is this relevant to water fountains? Because as much as Concordia wants to be lauded with feminist credibility, my compatriots and I attend a department in what is possibly the only building in Montreal without potable water. I'm told the water coolers (giant bottles of water, not winning over my green side) that are now in the building had to be lobbied for.
There are two soda machines all with canned liquid sugar that costs over a dollar.
As the monstrous curtain walls go up on the multi-million dollar John Molson school of business, I must ask myself how many coolers will be needed to service them.
Tue, 2008-09-09 04:26
#3
That is deeply shocking - I'd read about this elsewhere in Canada, but I didn't think it was possible in Montrйal. I have never seen a campus building here without water fountains, and I've used the libraries at all four universities researching my thesis.
The right to drink clean water is as essential to human life as the right to breathe clean air. Hope students, faculty and staff at all universities and colleges raise a stink about this. And boycott the drinks dispensers.
Tue, 2008-09-09 04:30
#4
Also note that water fountains have already essentially vanished from public places where they were once plentiful - parks, public sports facilities, etc. Walk through any good sized park, and you're likely to find an antiquated stone or metal looking structure that once dispensed water.
Tue, 2008-09-09 07:17
#5
Pogo
What buildings need to do is put in the water dispensers. They look like they are dispensing magical bottled water, but really it is just tap water ran through a filter. At my old workplace we changed from bottled water and not one person complained.
I brought up getting people to use water fountains at my daughter's high school, but we have been conditioned to be such germaphobes that no one is using them.
Tue, 2008-09-09 07:36
#6
They could simply change the shape of the water fountains, making them little taps that one would stick a bottle or cup under (designed in such a way that people couldn't put their lips on them).
There are some taps like that beside classic water fountains at UQAM.
I'm not a germophobe, but I do notice a fair number of dogs among the water-fountain users at Parc Jarry near here. Now, I like dogs very much, but we all know that they are not precisely the most fastidious of beings with respect to what they will lick or ingest.
Perhaps an automatic dog-water-bowl on a lower level?
Tue, 2008-09-09 10:09
#7
M. Spector
We were discussing water fountains in [url=http://www.rabble.ca/babble/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=45&t=000331]this thread about bottled water.[/url]
Wed, 2008-09-10 05:18
#8
Those are the only new water fountains I've seen - the ones for dogs.