After Covid-19 struck there have been a variety of different changes to prevent the spreading of the virus. Many of these changes have taken place within communities and schools. One change that took place at Bay Port was partially turning off the bubblers so that only people with a water bottle, or any sort of container, could access it. 

This hasn’t been much of an issue within the year, until the recent new change to the cafe and vending machine open hours. They are only open before or after school hours. If a student doesn’t bring a water bottle or simply forgets, finding a way to access water is a little more limited now.

Recently, I just had a harmless dry throat. I didn’t have a water bottle on me so when I had the opportunity I just went down to the cafe to buy myself some water to help soothe my throat. To my dismay, when I made it to the cafe it was closed. My second option was to just grab one at the vending machines. I knew about the new hours, but my throat was already hurting, so I decided to just take that risk. 

After trying to buy it, a hall monitor that was passing by told me that the vending machines were closed and not to use it. So now with the cafe closed and vending machines shut down, I looked for some change to buy some at The Cove, our school store. Unfortunately that was closed as well.

There was still some time to wait for lunch to open; the only issue was that my throat was already starting to get worse and that was the only thing I could think about during that  time. The last resort was going down to the office to see if they had either a water bottle or just a cup so I could use the bubbler. Luckily, they had little cups in the health room I could use.

After grabbing one for myself I went to the nearest bubbler to fill it up; it took a couple refills to help, but finally getting some water was a relief. Even with the little cup that was given to me, it was difficult to maintain until lunch opened up, and I could finally buy a proper water bottle. 

With these new hours for the vending machines and cafe there is only a limited time to get either drinks or food. The outcome of this was to try to limit the amount of students in the hallway. That is understandable except bubblers should be fully on so if a student were to forget a water bottle or doesn’t even have a cup, they can just take a quick sip from the bubbler.