Depriving the sleepy night owl of fuel

Coffee is a wonderful item. It can be prepared in lots of different ways and can have pretty much any flavor you want added to it. Better yet, you can have it whenever you want in this day and age...well sort of.

If you have ever visited a large city that has the stereotypical coffee shop around every corner, you know the convenience of the hot black liquid that people love to drink. It’s everywhere and keeps you awake when you’re dozing off.

I personally drink at least one or two cups of coffee in the mornings and might have more later in the day, but this semester my habits have been hindered. Common Grounds used to be my watering hole, so to speak, as I was a regular getting my white chocolate latte, but now I hardly ever stop in. This recent change isn’t by choice. It is purely done by force. I simply can’t get in and even if I did no one would be working to serve me anything.

As most of my friends and I know, Common Grounds is no longer open past 9 p.m. I can see where this would be an acceptable time if the coffee shop was off campus or not attached to the library that’s open until midnight during the week. While I might not make extensive use of the library, I do work around that area and often times I am there well past 9 p.m. Even though I am a night owl, I am often a drowsy one and while meandering to work a few minutes early, I will often check and see if the coffee shop is open, and to much of a disappointment it’s closed and fairly often it’s closed 15 minutes early. Now not only does the recent change in service hours bother me, but this is just crazy.
 

I applaud the Coffee Shop and Sodexo for trying new things that make them seem a bit more reputable, like the new to-go line and daily specials, but I frown at the total disregard to students it seems to have. When I’m working late at night and dozing off, I used to have three options: I could go to a store, I could go to the coffee shop, or I could go to the grill.
 

Now I have two options, a store or the grill, and frankly at 9 p.m. at night neither of these sound like a great idea for staying up. A store isn’t convenient and wastes more of my time and the grill has pop to try and keep me up which would ultimately fail. I think overall that Sodexo should re-look at what it’s doing with its funds and take some of what could be wasted money to get a late night barista or two to help us college students fight against sleep, and ongoing struggle.