Free coffee, tea turns from weekly to monthly at Law School
A popular event was changed from “Caffeinated Mondays” to “Monthly Morning Coffee and Tea.”
Kimberly Angeles, Contributing Photographer
After an unexplained hiatus, a Yale Law School tradition providing a boost of caffeine on Monday mornings is back — but diminished.
“Caffeinated Mondays” offered free coffee and tea to the Law School community from 8 a.m. to noon each Monday in the Ruttenberg Dining Hall.
“A free coffee may not seem like much, but once the cold snap hits the New Haven air and the never-ending churn of clinic work reaches its full swing, my Monday morning bulldog blend sparks joy and motivates me to continue on another day,” Hannah Terrapin LAW ’26 wrote to the News.
But at the start of the school year last month, Frederick Liu LAW ’27 said he went to the cafeteria one Monday and was told by an employee that it no longer had free coffee.
On Wednesday morning, Karen Alderman, the managing director of human resources and administration at the Law School, announced the beginning of “Monthly Morning Coffee and Tea” in an email to the Law School community that the News obtained.
According to Alderman’s announcement, free coffee and tea will be available one Monday morning a month, starting this week. After Sept. 29, it will be offered on Oct. 6, Nov. 10 and Dec. 1 — four mornings over the entire semester.
In response to the announcement, law students expressed some relief. But Liu still cast the move as a loss compared to previous years.
“I still remember dragging myself into SLB 129 for my 8:10 a.m. Contracts class with Prof. Brooks and downing the glorious $0 ‘promissory espresso’ (my only defense against unconscionability),” Liu wrote to the News, referring to a course with Professor Richard Brooks in the Sterling Law Building.
“With that luxury downgraded, I’ll start accepting my Monday mornings ‘as is,’ with no implied warranty of wakefulness,” Liu added. “I’m still grateful to the school for keeping it once a month – it’s better than nothing given the current budget situation.”
Yale administrators have in recent months taken measures to reduce spending due to an increase in the federal tax on the school’s endowment returns.
Law School spokesperson Alden Ferro did not answer the News’ emailed question about whether the reduction of caffeinated Mondays from weekly to monthly was a symptom of budget cuts.
The Yale Law Dining Hall was renamed the Ruttenberg Dining Hall in 2016.