It’s swim season again in P.E. classes. After a tiring session in the pool, students crowd the shower room, shiver from the cold, and desperately try to get to their next class on time. Puddles are literally everywhere in the locker room.

As this scene displays, swimming as a P.E. requirement is inefficient, messy, wasteful, and more trouble than it’s worth.

To start with, mopping up puddles of chlorine water left by students can be a headache for P.E. teachers. The puddles next to the lockers are gross, especially since many don’t clean up after themselves, leaving a trail of water behind them.

Plus, most students like to take a brief shower after swimming. Some students shampoo and condition their hair in the short minutes they are given, while others simply step in the shower to rinse the chlorine off their hair and bodies. Either way, too much water is used, and California is currently in a severe drought.

Aside from block days, each class period is only 50 minutes long, and P.E. students get seven minutes in the beginning of class and another seven minutes at the end of class to dress. For swimming, however, students get seven more minutes to shower before class ends. Not counting the time to take roll and explain class activities, this leaves a total of about 29 minutes to swim. All the hassle and mess for just short of a half-hour of actual swimming is ridiculous.

Some claim that swimming is a survival skill to avoid drowning. While it is a valid survival skill, you can learn swimming in other places. Plus, if you want to argue that things that are useful in life should be taught in school, in what class am I taught how to do taxes?

Remove swimming from SCHS’s P.E. requirements. Its cons outweigh the pros.

This is strictly the opinion of Bonnie Liu of The Roar staff.