In what WCC is calling “an incredible milestone for the whole community”, the water bottle filling station in Augur has reached and surpassed 10,000 water bottle equivalents filled. Since being installed last fall, this station has been an incredible boon to the community’s health and spirit, water a scare commodity amongst the multitudes of WCC campus buildings.
Although we are excited of course at the high usage this station has found, in love of numbers as we are, the “incredible milestone” tone seems to a few of us to be over the top. Why make such a big deal about a number that means nothing in what is truly the natural base of counting and mathematics: base 3.
Is something deeper signified by their focus on this number on reached. As St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas speak of signification for numeric quantitative accidents and the “spiritual sense” implied through the things that a word signifies, is WCC implying that reality is somehow ordered by God to a meaning necessary for salvation through the “thing” of water refills?
Some of the deeper poetic members here at IIT think so, but as a freshmen rocker pointed out, the announcement text was simply: “WBEs reach 10,000: This is an incredible milestone for the whole community”. The simple denomination would be that WBE is “water-bottle equivalent” which lead us to use a literal sense interpretation based on our common knowledge of Augur from a high-proportion of classes there last semester. However, as this anonymous source pointed out, the release came not just from the school but specifically from the department of the Outdoor Leadership Program. What its really about he says: “With the Spring Outdoor Week, WCC reached 10,000 wag-bag equivalents used over its entire history!”