We don’t need a sixth Starbucks. We need Arwa on campus.

UTD students love to complain. They complain about all the buildings looking like some brutalist fever dream. They complain about the power grid never working and the elevators making ominous sounds. They complain about class, and about not going to class. One of the few things they don’t complain about is our lack of Starbucks. Because there, unfortunately, is no lack. And yet university leadership has decided to add another Starbucks inside the upcoming JSOM III building. As one of thousands of caffeine addicts on campus, I am left wondering: why?  

We don’t need more Starbucks. What we need is an Arwa Yemeni Cafe.  

When news first got out that JSOM’s Tradecraft coffee shop had been replaced with a wall — a decision JSOM Dean Hasan Pirkul attributed to a Starbucks non-compete clause — my first reaction wasn’t shock. Of course the mega-corporation with 38,000 locations worldwide demanded exclusivity, and of course UTD, an institution that prides itself on being “the MIT of the South,” folded. Nothing says innovation and entrepreneurship like signing an exclusivity deal with the same company that already has a location in the Student Union, another in Northside, one just down Campbell inside the Tom Thumb ​and ​one directly across the Tom Thumb and another inside of the Target on Coit.  

Yes, there are five Starbucks within a two-mile radius of campus. Five identical green sirens selling five identical over-roasted lattes. And UTD is adding a sixth.  

I also want to be clear, I have nothing against Starbucks as a concept, excluding their horrible labor practices and monopolistic approach, of course. They are a reliable place to buy coffee when you are stranded in an airport or a highway rest stop. But we are not stranded. We are in the middle of the DFW metroplex with suburban sprawl and identical strip malls as far as the eye can see in every direction.  

UTD should be more than a decrepit strip mall whose only profitable business is Starbucks. Our campus is home to 30,000 students who each deserve the best coffee our research dollars can buy. It helps that Richardson is one of the most diverse suburbs of Dallas, with a food culture steeped in centuries-old coffee traditions that were, for some unexplainable reason, brought to North Texas. Enter Arwa Yemeni Cafe.  

If you have never had Yemeni coffee, I am genuinely sorry. It is not the bitter, burnt, inconsistent sludge that passes for coffee at most American chains. It is spiced — cardamom, ginger, cinnamon and cloves — and served with dates, flatbread and wonderful rose milk cakes, because Yemeni coffee culture understands that caffeine should be an experience. The signature drink, which also happens to be my favorite, is the Adeni Chai. It is a slow-steeped black tea with evaporated milk and a medley of spices that will make you question every chai latte you’ve ever had. The coffee itself is smooth enough to drink black and complex enough that you won’t need to add anything to it.  

An Arwa location coming to UTD is not just a hypothetical pipe dream. When Tradecraft was closed, Arwa Yemeni Cafe’s official Instagram account commented the eyes emoji under The Retrograde’s post about the closure. They also already have multiple locations across Dallas, Richardson and Plano — including one on South Greenville Avenue, a roughly 10-minute drive from campus. Hundreds of students, staff and faculty already make the arduous journey there. The demand exists and Arwa is aware of the situation. The only thing missing is a location where students can freely walk between classes instead of risking a midday car ride on UTD’s dangerous roads.  

UTD loves to talk about diversity, its international student population and its global outlook, but diversity shouldn’t just be reduced to a number on a fun facts sheet. What you do to honor and expand that diversity is what matters. One of the best things UTD has the chance to do with this diversity is to allow students from Yemen, Somalia, the Gulf states and Ethiopia — all the places where coffee was born and perfected — to walk into a campus cafe and taste something that reminds them of home. It is just a happy byproduct that the rest of us get that taste too.  

Instead, we are getting our sixth Starbucks. The same espresso roast. The same sugary slop syrups. The same $6 drink that tastes like what I can only imagine ECSS would taste like: bad and sticky.  

I am not naive. I know that Starbucks has lawyers and money, which JSOM, as our business school, loves. We have already acted to enforce their non-compete clause and so long as that stands, we are unlikely to get any other coffee vendor in the JSOM complex no matter what students want. UTD has a legal department for a reason, though, and they would be best used to weasel the university out of any commitments that may have already been made to Starbucks.  

The Tradecraft space is walled off but not gone. The new JSOM building is still under construction. There is time, however little may remain, to change course. To tell Starbucks that five locations in a two-mile radius of campus is more than enough. To call Arwa and ask if they’d like to serve the students who already drive down Greenville Avenue for their cardamom coffee and rose milk cake.  

If UTD wants to be the MIT of the South, it should start acting like it. MIT doesn’t even have a Starbucks on campus, let alone two of them. What it has are local shops that give students a wide variety of taste. We should provide this opportunity to ​our ​students too. 

So​,​ I humbly request that UTD blow up or otherwise demolish the new Starbucks location and replace it with an Arwa Yemeni Cafe — legally, of course. Everyone will praise this decision and reap the rewards of good coffee for decades to come.