Guest column: Rating the best drinking fountains at USU

Now that my turn has come to finally graduate from Utah State, I have found myself feeling the need to give back in some way and share with the incoming class of students some of the wisdom I’ve gained these last four years. So I thought I might rate the drinking fountains of Utah State as a service to my fellow Aggies so that as you walk these corridors thirsting for knowledge, you will not forget to thirst for water.

1. Taggart Student Center – First Floor

This list is off to a great start! This is the drinking fountain closest to the food court, which might make it the most famous of all drinking fountains at Utah State. Now fame does have a price because this drinking fountain is also well-trafficked so get ready to wait in line. Don’t worry: the wait is worth it because this drinking fountain has a clean refreshing flavor, good solid pressure, a sleek modern look and a VERY cool temperature, which is great for that famously hot Utah weather! For all Aggies at USU, this fountain is a real thirst quencher!

2. Biology And Natural Resources – Second Floor

The next drinking fountain on this list is not a real thirst quencher. Found on the top floor of the BNR building, this old fountain has low pressure, a metallic flavor and you have to leave it running forever if you want it cold. I know because this one time my ex-girlfriend found me still holding the metallic button and that’s when she decided to tell me she didn’t want to see me anymore. I said “you’re not serious,” but she was serious. She said I didn’t think of her as an individual. I’m always telling her what I want for her, but I never consider what she wants for herself. I told her she was clearly just tired and should go home, get a good night’s rest, and in the morning all these funny ideas about “breaking up” wouldn’t bother her anymore.  She looked right at me; I mean really looked. There was a surprisingly deep sadness in her eyes. A sadness I’d never seen before. I stopped talking and a cold silence fell between us, much colder than the water still running over my open hand. She walked up to me, kissed my cheek for the last time, said “I’m truly sorry but it’s over” and then slipped away forever just around the bend. The water was still warm.

3. Science Engineering Research – Second Floor

This pair of drinking fountains are on the second floor of the engineering building. Maybe I should’ve been an engineering major. Maybe then I would’ve learned how relationships work and how to fix them when they break. I guess relationships don’t work like that a hard truth I’ve learned over these sleepless months in Caroline’s absence. You can’t mold people as though their bodies were concrete and steel and their mind a diagram of wires. Or maybe you can, but why should you want to? Why would you do anything to hurt those closest to you? I know that now, but what good does knowing do me? Do engineers ever get heartbroken? Do their meticulous blueprints of love fail miserably when the rubber hits the road? Should we even trust these engineers after they decided to put a drinking fountain between two bathroom doors so that wafting bathroom smells attack you on all fronts?

4. Merrill-Cazier Library – Third Floor

I figured girl problems were as old as humanity itself, so surely there must be whole sections devoted to the subject at the Cazier library. I told the librarian to ‘show me the books about women’, but she just gave me a confused look. “What do you mean?” she said. “Do you mean you want books on feminism? Can you be more specific?” Frustrated, I told her I needed books on understanding what women “think and stuff” and what they really mean when they say one thing but then give you a look that maybe means another. “I don’t think we have any books like that,” the librarian said while giving me a perplexed frown. It was the kind of frown that said “yeah, why don’t we have books about what women are thinking? Boy, you sure seem like a smart guy. Any woman would be lucky to have you.”

5. Mathematics Department – Second Floor

I’ve resigned myself to the fact that a book could never solve this because you can’t treat relationships as if they were some sort of math equation to be solved. As if you could just find the right combination of words to say and then she would be yours. Sometimes you have to take a leap of faith. Sometimes you just have to be yourself and uncover the plumbing of your soul. Only then, when all of your wires and pipes and switches are laid bare, will she know who you really are. But that’s what I fear most, that Caroline really did know me. That she had seen behind my plastic covers, behind the metal vents of my heart and she didn’t like what she saw.

6. Eccles Business Building – First Floor

Should I just give up altogether and follow in the footsteps of great men that have gone before? Let love be damned and try to rule the world? Conquer all markets and consumers? Burn all competitors to dust and embers and bend their ashes to my will?  Should I build an empire of business so opulently grand that towering buildings of glass and steel are filled with silver drinking fountains, each one a monument to my dubious creed of loneliness? And even after death has robbed my body until only a painted specter of my imposing frame remains, forever presiding over a dying kingdom, will lesser men still beg to drink from my fountain of cold ambition? And if they looked up to meet my bereft stare, would they fear me, or have pity in their hearts?

7. Old Main – First Floor

But would empires and riches ever be enough? Even in my tormented dreams, where the drinking fountains are golden chalices housed by strange and beautiful shapes whose leering faces sneer through geometric masks, I’m still haunted by this aching grief, this black night that just goes on and on and on without her. But perhaps the night was always there, even before she kissed me goodbye. It was there when we’d make up excuses not to see each other. It was there when she said it was my turn to take out the trash but it totally wasn’t my turn cause I did it last. It was there when she gave me a confused glance as I wept suppressed tears watching The Fox and the Hound. It was there when we’d fight on the phone and I’d stop to take a drink from a fountain just to get a break from the same tortured arguments that always hung over our dreary lives.  We might have gone on forever like this, blindly groping for love in the dark if Caroline hadn’t found the courage to seek the dawn. Maybe I should do the same.

8. Eccles Science Learning Center – First Floor

Near the entrance to the science building, there is a great crew of drinking fountains. The pressure is a little on the low side, but the taste is good and the water is COLD! All in all, I’d say this fountain family gets two thumbs up!

Jacob Patty is a history major finishing up his final semester at USU.  He plays the piano, enjoys writing, and wishes he was born in cowboy times when a fella could live off the fat of the land between purple mountains and big blue skies.

Twitter: @jacobpattywagon

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