It is late, and I am writing.

My fingers tap the keys with, frankly, surprising precision, considering I’ve consumed enough coffee to power a small nation. At this point, I can’t decide if I’m thinking clearly or merely thinking quickly. Maybe that ambiguity is the charm of caffeinated productivity.

Let me be clear: I have no doubt that the author of “Cancel Caffeine Culture” meant well, even if I don’t agree with his characterization of UChicago’s caffeine culture as being “surrounded by bankers on Wall Street sniffing lines of cocaine.” Still, I understand the sentiment behind this dramatic proclamation.

I admire the author’s spirit, which shows concern for the well-being of students by highlighting the institution’s responsibility to manage the College’s caffeine consumption for the greater good. But here is where things start to unravel. Why, exactly, is it the institution’s responsibility to regulate the caffeine in our bodies?

The College’s caffeine culture is pervasive; this much is true. Walk into any student-run café and you’ll find the usual suspects in caffeine addiction. Tables covered in laptops; books strewn about; and, of course, cups of coffee, matcha, or the occasional neon energy drink, which, let’s be honest, never tastes as good as it looks.

What’s missing from the original article, amid the calls for action, the alarms about excessive energy drink consumption, and the anecdotes of students stacking Red Bull cans like trophies is the humble possibility that caffeine consumption might just be a voluntary communal coping mechanism.

Perhaps our caffeine culture is a practical, if imperfect, tool for navigating UChicago’s undergraduate experience: where going to sleep at 2 a.m. is somehow the marker of productivity, and the ideal work–life balance involves espresso followed by an MMA match against a PSET in the octagon we call Canvas.

But what exactly is the problem here? Is it caffeine? Is it the high levels of tolerance that the author addresses? Or is it the fact that we are engaging in a ritual of collective madness, a sort of commitment to “the bit” of academic life where, instead of stopping to question the culture we’ve built, we’ve just doubled down on more stuff to keep us going?

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not celebrating caffeine overconsumption. As someone who, admittedly, has spent far too many afternoons between the pages of a book and the bottom of a coffee cup, I know what happens when you drink too much of the stuff. Still, doesn’t it feel a bit simplistic to point the finger at the substance itself, as though it is the true cause of our sleep-deprived, jittery condition?

In urging the institution to step in and regulate caffeine consumption, the author may be missing the point. If caffeine is the communal drug of choice to survive the University’s intellectual storm, who are we kidding? It’s not the University’s fault. The institution, by all means, could put up posters warning of the perils of excessive caffeine. They could mandate Core classes on caffeine etiquette.

Yet I’m not convinced that caffeine is the villain here. Is it problematic? It certainly could be. The real question we should be asking is: Why, in a place that supposedly values intellectual freedom and critical inquiry, do we find ourselves driven by a culture of unrelenting productivity?

Maybe, instead of trying to solve the caffeine problem, we ought to question the larger academic culture that seemingly demands we grind ourselves into dust in order to prove our worth. If the University really wanted to protect us, it wouldn’t confiscate our caffeinated beverages; it would question why we need them in the first place.

Regulation without reflection is just decaf: technically coffee, but missing what matters. But, of course, this all comes with a caveat. None of us are really going to change.

Honestly, tomorrow morning, I’ll probably make another cup of coffee without hesitation. Maybe you will too. The grind is too familiar and too delicious to abandon. That’s exactly the point: the drug is not just in the coffee; it’s in the culture that makes coffee indispensable.

We caffeinate not because we are weak but because we are obedient to a system that rewards sleeplessness and penalizes rest—one which often confuses exhaustion with excellence.

I’ll keep sipping my coffee, typing out these thoughts with jittery conviction, trying to remember if Heidegger said anything about Being and Time Management. Probably not. But if he had, I bet he was drinking coffee when he wrote it.

 Shawn Quek is the Head Arts Editor of the Maroon and a second-year in the College.