Fountain running after drought
Reasons for it not working include harsh weather and wind, facility officals say
Ryan Tubongbanua / The Collegian
Not working since the start of the semester, the fountain was filled and later ran on Sunday. Facilities said the cause of its inactivity is bad weather. |
By Megan Bakker
The Collegian
When Fresno State’s iconic fountain is running, students are treated to jets of water shooting majestically into the air and cascading down again into the gigantic base. But that’s not what students have seen lately.
“I haven’t noticed it on all semester,” Ashley Goral, a psychology major said.
Bob Boyd, associate vice president for facilities management, said while the weather was bad, they took the opportunity to completely drain the fountain and clean it up.
“It’ll probably be up and running when the weather clears,” he said. Sunday marked the first day the fountain turned on. Students have noticed the absence of water in the fountain since the beginning of this semester.
“Last semester was the last time I saw it on,” Christie Dy, a physical therapy major said.
Instead, students were seeing a dry concrete bowl with cracked sides and scum along the blue tile.
According to Boyd, that’s the fault of bad weather.
“There is nothing wrong with the fountain to the best of our knowledge,” Boyd said. Instead, the recent storms have been the culprit. Boyd said Facilities Management won’t run the pump in cold weather to prevent water in it from freezing. He also said the fountain has a sensor that turns off automatically if there’s a strong wind so water doesn’t spray on students walking past.
Allen Crow, another employee at Facilities Management, said the fountain is only programmed to come on at certain times during the day, but he wasn’t sure when that was.
Lap Ngo, a graphic design major said even though he hadn’t seen the fountain on during the day, he remembered other times it was on.
“Whenever, I go by in the day it’s not running,” Ngo said. “When I go by late at night sometimes it’s on though, which is really weird.”
When the fountain is turned off, some students don’t like the way it looks.
“I think it looks kind of stupid. Kind of empty,” Goral said.
“If it’s never on, why have it?” Rachel Anderson, mechanical engineering major said.
Other students, however, don’t have an opinion one way or the other.
“I don’t care,” Daniel Dukes, a dance major said. “I don’t walk by there, really.”
Ngo said when he first came to Fresno State, the running water in the fountain was a bonus.
“It reminded me of the beach,” Ngo said. “I was like, 'Hey, here’s some water around.' But it’s not that big of a deal anymore.”
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