Editorial: A caffeinated campus

Let’s start with a hypothetical:

You wake up on Monday morning feeling a bit groggy and decide to wake yourself up for class with an iced coffee. Later in the day, your friends ask you if you want to go with them on a Saxby’s run. You decide you may as well join the social outing. You’re still a bit tired, so another cold brew could help you make it through the rest of the day. 

Fast forward to the evening. You’re studying in a cubicle in FML, it’s getting late and you still have hours of work to get done. You venture downstairs to The Grind to eat a snack and notice extra strength 5-hour Energy shots being sold by the register. You grab a bottle off the counter, figuring a little extra energy boost to finish your assignment couldn’t hurt. As you attempt to fall asleep that night, you find yourself lying awake for hours. Once your alarm goes off Tuesday morning, and you wake up feeling groggy once again…

Whether or not you can relate to this scenario, it’s undeniable that caffeine is ubiquitous on college campuses throughout the United States.

An article from the National Library of Medicine found that 92% of college students consume some form of caffeine daily, with the average intake equalling just under two cups of coffee per day.

Lehigh University students are no exception.

Whether you’re in your dorm, at a dining hall, in an academic building or in one of the libraries on campus, the nearest cup of coffee is only a few steps away.

And beyond just coffee, most retail dining locations on campus also sell highly caffeinated energy drinks and the previously mentioned 5-hour Energy shots that pack a much stronger punch than a freshly brewed cup of coffee from Saxby’s.

In potentially the most egregious example, the pharmaceutical section of The Lehigh Store has started selling 200-milligram caffeine pills. For reference, a standard cup of coffee has about 90 milligrams of caffeine in it.

But why does it matter? Who cares whether or not Lehigh students are drinking three cups of coffee a day if it helps them get their work done?

The answer depends on how and when you have your caffeine.

The FDA recommends that a healthy adult consume no more than 400 milligrams of caffeine on any given day in order to avoid serious negative side effects. This gives consumers room to have the equivalent of four coffees without posing a serious risk to themselves.

Even the most avid coffee drinkers rarely get to cup number five in a single day. Does this mean that we have the FDA green light to keep sipping well into the evening?

Unfortunately, the time of day when you consume your caffeine is much more important than the amount you’re having.

Another article from the National Library of Medicine found that having a large dose of caffeine close to bedtime “significantly disrupts sleep.” Consuming caffeine even six hours before you go to bed could reduce your sleep by more than an hour.

Having a night of poor sleep can lead you to wake up feeling tired, causing you to become even more reliant on coffee throughout the day, continuing the cycle. 

While this information is certainly alarming, simply acknowledging the negative effects won’t necessarily alleviate the issue all together. At this point, drinking coffee has become an integral part of many of our daily routines, and walking around with a Saxby’s cup or a can of Bang Energy has become a symbol of social status of sorts. 

For whatever strange reason, it just feels cool to walk around campus holding a coffee, especially one you’ve bought and not made at home. 

This — coupled with the ease with which you can find sources of caffeine on campus — can make it nearly impossible to get through a day without getting a boost.

We’re not saying that students should give up coffee entirely. Even if you have multiple cups a day, if you’re giving your body enough time to process the caffeine before you go to sleep, you probably won’t see too many negative effects.

Hopefully providing students with this information might lead some to change in their relationships with caffeine.

Many students don’t know that their 5 p.m. coffee is affecting their sleep. Our advice: If you’re studying at night and feel a craving for coffee, settle for decaf.