Letter to the Editor. E-mail [email protected].

Would you turn on your faucet and leave it running for days just for fun?

Would you go to the store, buy thousands of dollars worth of food and then leave it rotting in the sun in order to have a good time?

Of course you wouldn’t, because it would be incredibly wasteful.

However, if you participated in Christian Student Fellowship’s annual record-breaking water balloon fight last Friday, then you might as well have done both of these things, and on a much larger scale.

We are in the midst of a global water crisis.

According to the United Nations, one out of every six people currently does not have adequate access to clean, safe drinking water.

Further, 2.5 billion people do not have access to improved sanitation, which results in an increase in water-related diseases.

Billions of people around the world cannot access safe water on a daily basis, yet last Friday 5,976 people on UK’s campus threw enough water balloons at one another to provide 1,000 people with safe drinking water for 23 days.

All of this was, according to UK CSF campus minister Brian Marshall, for the purpose of “thousands of smiles and high fives and memorable stories.”

I applaud the CSF in their mission to enjoy life to the fullest, but why must they squander such a precious and rare resource in order to do so?

Couldn’t they think of a way to break a world record, have fun and not waste thousands of gallons of the one resource that this planet needs the most?

We live in an age where we all must be mindful of the consequences of our actions. We can no longer ignore our responsibility to this planet and its inhabitants.

And as an influential organization at the commonwealth’s largest university, the CSF has a responsibility to set a good example in all of its endeavors, be they record-breaking or not.