East has a variety of good and bad water fountains. Here’s how they stack up.

I don’t want to get too political here, but as my remaining days at Shawnee Mission East dwindle down, there’s important information I’d like to relay to my youngins before I leave for good — the hierarchy amongst the water fountains that lie within the halls here at East. And I’m here to help you find the perfect one.

Some might call me an expert when it comes to drinking water. After all, I’ve been drinking it for almost 18 years. That being said, I considered three factors while on my hunt for the perfect water spout were: cleanliness, coldness and convenience. The most important factor for me is coldness. I don’t know about you, but my H₂0 needs to be icy. So in deciding which water distributor took the gold, the category that carried the most weight was temperature.

I tested 20 water fountains here at East to see which silver beauty would be taking home the first place trophy. My journey began on the fifth floor in the language hallway, and ended on the first floor in the math hallway.

After completing this incredible quest to find which fountain I would be filling up my water bottle with from here on out, I made a few discoveries. The first was that all of the fountains I encountered were in fantastic condition. It’s a rare day if I ever go to a fountain and a piece of chewed gum is laying within the gutter. My second discovery was the consistency on the fifth floor: this floor had the overall best consistency when it came to the three C’s of water fountains. And the third was that there are no water-bottle-filler fountains by the gyms, which Dr. Sherman (who I bumped into on my journey) and I both found odd since athletes should be filling up water bottles the most often.

Out of all of the water fountains that I tested out, there were two fountains that stood out to me the most — the water fountain right next to room 521 and the fountain right next to room 127 in the basement.

I’ve been going to the water fountain by room 521 since my freshman year. I love it. It’s like home to me. The fountain and I have an understanding of each other that I can’t quite describe. I’ve been a returning student to this fountain over the past four years, especially when I was in room 521 everyday for my daily dose of journalism. It’s very icy, convenient and clean. I rated this old timer a 10/10.

The water fountain in the basement is a new one — one might say a rookie. I can’t say I’ve been to this fountain until this experiment, but every person I asked said that this fountain could be my match. At first, I was skeptical, since I would have to go out of my way to go to the first floor for this fountain. But this fountain caught me off guard. The silver machine showed me that new can be good, and a little walk for a glass of water is worth the wait. This fountain had a water bottle filler, so it made it very easy for me to fill up my cup, and the water was the coldest fountain in the school. She deserves a prestigious 10/10.

With all of that being said, I hope you find the water fountain that is perfect for you, because I know I did.