“Dumbwaiter, no; kitchenette, yes; elevator, yes.”

Prior to their arrival to Mount Holyoke College, new students have access to a list on the Res-Life section of the school website, which informs them of the availability of certain facilities in their assigned residence halls. Although seemingly comprehensive enough, this list fails to mention one item that is crucial for students’ residential well-being.

In MacGregor Hall, where the First-year Focus floor is located, new students were struggling to keep themselves hydrated during the first days of school.

“I was told to find drinking fountains in nearby academic buildings, which are at least 5 minutes away from my dorm,” one of the first-year students recalled, “I was in my pajamas.”

Not even one filtered drinking machine is installed in at least 6 of the residence halls in Mount Holyoke College, most of which are located in the corners of the campus. Not given a heads-up of this fact, students came in assuming that there would be provision of sources of drinking water—it is such an essentiality that no one would doubt its presence in dormitories. They were shocked to find the opposite.

First-year Students were not prepared for this. To those who are reluctant to drink tap water, hydration became an unexpectedly tough challenge. “I was so, so dehydrated!” a first-year student exclaimed, recalling her first few days at school.

To most student residents, filtered drinking machines are considered essential to their residential welfare. While all of MHC’s nearby colleges have either filtered tap or drinking machines installed in all dormitories, some of which share with MHC the same water source, less than half of the dormitories in MHC have access to such filtered water.

This has terribly ruffled students’ residential life.

“It is basically impossible to get water in the middle of the night,” one Ham Hall student resident said, “it is horrible when I get thirsty waking up late at night.”

“I was once very sick and could not get out of the building for days. The lack of water fountain only made it worse when I constantly needed water for my throat,” another student recalled. During that time, she could only get water from the dining hall downstairs, which typically opens three to four times a day.

Protest letters demanding drinking fountains stack up Facilities Management department’s mailbox, but students’ wish has never been granted. “We don’t have enough in the budget for this,” replies the office each time.

Mr. John Donah, Mount Holyoke College’s plumbing director, is responsible for all sources of water running on campus. According to him, the installing process would take up a giant chunk of budget, not including the cost of the machines themselves, which amount to roughly 1000 dollars each. “We have to open up walls, connect those pipes,” he explained, “this process can get a 1000 dollar budget to turn into 8000 dollars.”

Despite Mr. Donah’s claim that the budget deficit is the reason of the school’s postponing drinking fountains’ installment in residence halls, such operation never seems to have trouble being processed in the other buildings on campus. There are more than 40 filtered drinking machines on campus, yet very few of them are located at where students actually reside in—residence buildings.

“Sometimes I wish I can live in an academic building, just for the water,” one of the students teased. In all academic buildings, there is at least one water fountain on each floor—students don’t even have to walk up and down to reach the fountains. It seems that there is no financial strains in these cases.

Mr. Donah claims that the reason of the machines being concentratedly distributed in academic buildings is that they were built during the buildings’ construction. According to him, drinking fountains are mostly placed in all buildings constructed after the drinking fountain was introduced to college campus. Apparently, it can be a lot cheaper to get these machines installed “when you do that at the beginning.”

“It is the same in residence halls,” Mr. Donah said. “The newest dorm, Creighton, had a water fountain installed during its construction in 2008.”

Only the newest buildings get to have water fountains? In fact, buildings like the Williston Library and Skinner Hall, where at least 6-8 water fountains are placed in, were built at the same time as most of the residence halls.

“They were installed during renovations,” Donah replied to this confusion, ignoring the fact that some of the residence halls did not get drinking fountains while undergoing renovations during the same time period.

With school officials’ responses being sloppy, there seems to be little hope for students to get access to filtered water in their residence halls. Students are forced to find alternative ways to drink water.

Some students started putting “carry water in bottles from academic buildings” on their daily schedule, others spend at least 20 dollars buying water filters online, which take credit for filtering out metal containment.

Some simply give up and drink directly from sinks in the kitchenettes.

“People need to toughen up,” said a student who drinks water directly from the tap, “I haven’t had any health problems so far.”

No visible health problems are spotted from tap-water drinkers on campus, but does it mean that tap water is safe for drinking?

Some of the residence buildings were constructed right after the establishment of this school in 1837, some were built years after. However, all of the buildings, except for Creighton Hall, were built before 1986, when the Congress amended the Safe Drinking Water Act, prohibiting the use of pipes that are not “lead-free”.

Plumbing systems built before this Law was enacted consisted majorly of lead. It is scientifically proven that lead poisoning, which has accumulating harm to human’s health, has in most cases no visible symptoms.

Donah admitted that although some of the pipes in these buildings were replaced by copper when reconstructions were carried out in the late-1990s or early-2000s, in-wall lead pipes are still not replaced with safer materials. They are still carrying water into each residence halls, among all other buildings in school.

Some of these lead pipes have existed since the establishment of the school. Although no visible sediment in water showing severe corrosion of these pipes, it is still possible that lead containment exceeds the safety level of drinking water.

The majorly used model of filtered drinking machines on campus, Hadley Taylor, contains a filter with a patented ATS lead-removal media. If replaced promptly, it can effectively eliminate lead containment in water. Without proper filtering as such, the tap water's compatibility for drinking is unknown.

The school still hasn’t given official respond to students’ requests on the provision of filtered water in residence halls, except for their repeated statement of budget deficit. In spite of this, the Facilities Management department is placing a cheaper, more easily installed alternative to drinking fountains—glass filters on the taps. These filters are recently installed in Mandelles Hall and MacGregor Hall, but the school has not expressed further intention of placing more of them in other residence halls.