The University of Illinois Springfield campus is a beautiful one all on its own, with all well-organized architecture and greenery. It manages to accurately capture the focus of academics and, equally, its desire to provide students with a comfortable experience. With the university’s growth comes a good deal of changes with regard to the overall structure of the campus and how things look and feel in each building. This especially holds true with the dorms, due to the on-campus students having to see them so often. It is surprising, then, to find that one of the more (presumably) common features found in dorms is not readily present in Founders Residence Hall.

Trust me, I’d be surprised if you guessed it by now, but what I mean is the absence of water fountains. “Now hold on just a moment,” I have heard people say, “There are fountains! They’re just on the first floor.” Well, while this is absolutely true in and of itself, there remains an overall issue with convenience. As a whole, the school’s goal should always be to aim for convenience among opportunistic opening for academic success.

I will not even try to argue that somehow being able to walk less to grab a drink of inevitably warm fountain water with gum near the drain will cause the students in FRH to suddenly experience an increase in their overall GPA. But comfort does reap benefits of success in regards to Universities especially, since the students have better things to do than decide if that first spark of energy should be used to wrap up a speech or drag their sorry carcass down to the first floor to grab a drink.

The students that need to be kept in consideration here are, most of all, students with ADD or difficulty maintaining their focus on one activity. It only takes one distraction to divert their energy elsewhere in a matter of time. Having faced this myself, it is worth understanding the perspective of those who go through this frustration over the most mundane of activities is, to some degree, necessary. Hopefully in the future, 2nd and 3rd-floor FRH residents can experience a crisp, refreshing taste of convenience. But until then, they are a couple flights of stairs away from that luxury.