Water is a human right. Most people would agree with that statement. The ability to press a button or turn a knob and get clean water is a modern miracle. However, if you press a button or turn a knob in our school, you get cloudy, warm water with an off-taste. To get clean water, you have to wait until lunch and get water from a dinky water cooler, or shell out $1.50 to get a bottle from the vending machine.

If you heard about children lacking clean drinking water, you might feel outrage, but for most of the people in this school, it’s just a daily issue that seems to be treated as an afterthought.  Every year, we get letters about passed water tests, but it’s obvious to anyone who sees the water that it isn’t suitable for drinking.

To make matters worse, we are forced to pay for actual clean water. Imagine a chaotic situation wherein a necessity of life is withheld from you unless you pay. That is what this school faces. It’s time actual efforts are placed in fixing this, so that all students can have access to clean water. In the meantime, we should have something similar to the lunchroom water cooler on every floor.