Whenever you’re head ing to class with all your learning essentials – laptop, pen, textbooks, and anything else you throw in your bookbag, don’t ever forget your water bottle. Hydrating during class and outside your learning time is paramount to staying healthy.

But what good is trying to stay hydrated if you don’t know which ones have the best tasting, coldest water? You might also think that all water tastes exactly the same – this is just not true. Each drinking fountain is connected with different pipes, and comparing two different water fountains is like comparing a motel to the William Penn. 

Thankfully, there are not many drinking fountains on campus that are legitimately bad – you will not get lead poisoning from any of the options.

However, some do not dispense the ice cold, tasty water you may be expecting. 

Unless you love the taste of warm water that does not hydrate you like it should, then the drinking fountain outside the mailroom in Lawrence Hall should be your last resort. This editor prefers his water to be ice cold, though, metal water bottles keep your water frosty.

This may be a hot – or cold – take, but the Elkay LZS8WSLK drinking fountain in the Boulevard Apartments lobby has to take the cake for the best drinking water option on campus.

For one, the water it dispenses is ice cold. You will never have to worry about lukewarm, nasty water that makes you want to wash out your water bottle, as this drinking fountain delivers every single time. 

The best feature is not the fact that the fountain automatically dispenses water when you place your bottle on it, but the water never stops dispensening until you move your bottle away from the sensor.

Why is this important? Most drinking fountains stop dispensing when they decide you have enough water to fill up a bottle. However, if yours is 40oz or larger, you’ll have to move your water bottle away, then put it back just to fill up your bottle all the way. With the drinking fountain in Boulevard, this is not an issue – you put it down once, wait about ten seconds, and you’re done.

If that fountain is unavailable, then the drinking fountain on the second floor of Academic Hall is a close second. It is old, basic, and harder to fill your bottle, but that water is crisp.