Tap-cold showers in the middle of winter. Flooding on the floor, showers that don’t turn on, loose shower handles that have a mind of their own. In the women’s and men’s locker rooms next to De Anza’s pool, used by student-athletes, P.E. classes, faculty and extra-curricular programs, the degraded shower facilities have plagued far corners of the De Anza community for years.
Users of the shower facilities describe a Russian roulette-like ritual for their shower experience.
De Anza women’s swim team member Darlena Trinh, 21, nursing major, describes the women’s locker room, “It’s like a gamble or a gotcha of if the shower is going to work … if the water pressure is good, or if there’s going to be cold water that day.”
Joyce Weisman, a returning student enrolled in fitness classes at De Anza recounts, “The biggest thing is the water temperature … It’s not consistent from day to day or even from moment to moment. You’d be staying there having a hot shower and suddenly it goes cold. And that also changes from shower head to shower head.”
In addition to the unreliable temperatures, some showers do not drain due to both clogged grates and pipes, as well as uneven paving that easily creates pockets of stagnant water.
This results in frequent flooding and subsequent health concerns. Flimsy shower shoes used by shower-goers often are insufficiently thick enough to elevate feet above the water, so they end up submerged in shower water — in an unsavory blend from previous users, as well as one’s own.
“Sometimes you’re standing in maybe an inch … and sometimes as deep as ankle-deep in water. And so with flip-flops on, it’s not really sanitary,” Weisman said.
Inconsistent water temperatures and poor drainage are among some of the main issues that shower users have had to cope with in a long series of relentless discomforts that have affected the locker rooms for years.
Weisman recalls these issues beginning as early as 2016 or 2017, and while maintenance performed some repairs to re-grout the shower floor in summer 2024, other complaints and underlying flooding problems remain unresolved.
“They made grouting a priority over the unlevel surfaces in which water pools and remains in the center of each community shower area … so there is a constant and continuing stand in water, which will again be a cause for grout problems in the future. So it’s a continuous ‘catch-22,’” Weisman said.
“The other thing … is the entire women’s locker room can be freezing,” Weisman said. “It doesn’t matter what time of day, and you think like the doors are open and the wind is blowing in because it can be so cold in there. So even if you have a hot shower, you still feel chilled because the air is so cold, and it’s just very frustrating.”
In previous years, spells of other problems included cold showers as well.
“I think … there (were) maybe two quarters … (in) 2017 or 2018 where the entire corridor was cold showers. There was never any hot water. It was painful to take showers,” Weisman said.
In the men’s locker room, the same issues persist with an additional layer — they are missing showerheads.
“There’s like four showerheads and the rest are … faucet-heads basically,” said men’s swim team member Jeremy Pietila, 22, computer science major.
The water temperatures do appear to be more consistent than in the women’s locker room.
“I wouldn’t say they get cold all the time, they get warm, but they’re just not great … It’s just the water pressure mostly,” said Pietila.
Though many cope with taking shorter showers, many students complain of a generally miserable experience. Those who regularly use the showers include the elderly and young children in extracurricular programs.
The quality of the showers often force some students to make a difficult choice.
“I have to pick, (to) not take (a shower here) and go home, or to suck it in and take (the) cold shower,” said Matilda Benkual, 69, a returning student taking De Anza P.E. classes for the past eight years.
Over the years, students have raised their complaints to faculty and staff, but their voices and efforts have largely fallen flat.
“I have talked to Casey (lead swim instructor for Adapted Aerobic Swimming) but I don’t know what he can do,” Benkual said.
Weisman has repeatedly raised these problems to the Division Administrative Assistant of the Physical Education and Athletics Department Susan Ho.
Though Weisman has been met with positive support on her visits, the root problems remain untouched.
“Whenever I would come to her with my comments or complaints about the locker room or the shower, whatever was going on, she always was receptive and put in requests to facilities and to address the specific issues that I communicated,” Weisman said. “But this is an ongoing problem, and it needs to be just taken care of, so we can have showers (with) good temperatures.”
