THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2014
PAGE 11A
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This photo released by Central Michigan University in Mount Pleasant, Mich., shows James Holton, owner of Mountain Town Station Brewing Co. & Restaurant.
University launches beer-making program
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DETROIT - Colleges and beer have a long shared history. A university in Michigan is taking that partnership to a new level with the creation of a program to train and certify experts in "fermentation science."
Central Michigan University in Mount Pleasant this week announced plans to launch the program in fall 2015, aimed particularly at supporting and boosting the state's fast-growing craft brewing industry, now a $1 billion-plus annual business.
"There's a lot of romantic attachment to beer."
"As of 2013, Michigan ranked fifth in the nation in number of breweries, behind only California, Colorado, Oregon and Washington," said Ian Davison, dean of the College of Science and Technology at the Mount Pleasant school.
Michigan State University has operated an artisan distilling program for 15 years and last year started a beverage specialization program that also includes beer and wine-making.
Central Michigan bills its undergraduate program as the first in the state specifically aimed at providing a "handson education focused on craft beer." Similar programs operate at the University of California's Davis and San Diego campuses and at Oregon State and Central Washington universities.
SCOTT GRAHAM Michigan Brewers Guild
The Central Michigan program will include classroom and lab work in biochemistry, chemistry and microbiology, as well as a 200-hour internship in a "production-scale facility"
The university, which is about 150 miles northwest of Detroit, said it is collaborating with the Mountain Town Brewing Co. and Hunter's Ale House in developing the program.
Program director Cordell DeMattei said it "will fill a need in the state and across the region for students to learn the science and technology underlying brewing ... and provides the training needed by future leaders of the craft brewing industry."
Recent years have seen an explosion of interest in small-scale, local, high-quality beer-making.
Rob Sirrine of the Michigan State University Extension said more than 400 acres of hops, beer's key flavoring ingredient, are under cultivation in Michigan. Growers' main market is small-sale in-state brewers, he said.
Behind the growth in demand for high-end beer is a long-running fascination with the brewing process, one of the oldest forms of human food processing.
"There's a lot of romantic attachment to beer," said Scott Graham, executive director of the Michigan Brewers Guild. The Lansing-based group represents the state's microbreweries, now numbering more than 160, and helped win passage this year of laws allowing them to expand.
In-state microbrewers currently have 5 percent of Michigan's beer market, a share that could easily double or triple, Graham said.
RIGHTS FROM PAGE 2A
Forty years after meeting at the University, they are now fighting to change marriage rights for same-sex couples in Kansas. They said it's become easier to be openly gay and that they've never had any problems in Lawrence as far as getting housing and dealing with bankers to buy property, even in the late 1980s and '90s.
They are sharing their story at Free and Equal Kansas, an event sponsored by several LGBTQ student groups. They said there are students who come from all over who have different voices and perspectives and they hope to help raise a more unified voice in support of equal marriage rights in the community.
Nelson said it has taken a lot of work and energy to raise funds to support the lawsuit, but it's worth it to them.
"You've got to keep focused on it as a vision," he said.
Joey Hentzler, a senior from Topeka, was the one who met Dedemon and Nelson and suggested they come to Lawrence to share their story. Hentzler met the couple last year during Kansas City Pride Fest.
Hentzler said Free and Equal Kansas will be a discussion about LGBTQ issues, social justice and same-sex marriage in general, and Dedmon and Nelson will tell their story and talk about the lawsuit.
"We have a progressive past and we also have a progressive present, and that's what I want to plug students in to, to make them realize that this battle is
going on right now," Hentzler said.
He also hopes that the event will get people primed for the upcoming election and inspire them to become politically active in supporting gay rights.
"That's another thing that I'm wanting to come from this discussion, is to make people mad or to make people want to do something about it. So when we see discrimination, not only can we use the courts, but we also can use the legislature and our vote," Hentzler said.
Edited by Jennifer Salva
Free and Equal Kansas will take place Thursday night, at 7 p.m. in the Sabatini Multicultural Resource Center on campus.
Perry campaigns for Brownback in Wichita
WICHITA - Texas Gov. Rick Perry said Wednesday that Kansas has a competitive business climate and that his Republican coileague Gov. Sam Brownback is his rival for economic development and investment.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Brownback is locked in a close race with Democratic challenger Paul Davis amid voter backlash over cuts to classroom spending and massive tax cuts that have created revenue shortfalls.
The Kansas governor "understands you cannot tax and spend yourself into prosperity," Perry said.
GOP headquarters in Wichita that Kansas is "headed in the right direction" on an upward trajectory.
"Now we have a business climate in Kansas better than Texas," he said in a brief statement.
Perry told the fewer than 100 supporters who attended a Brownback campaign rally at
About 150 supporters of Davis showed up to protest outside the private donor reception Brownback was hosting with Perry later that evening.
Kansas Democratic Party chairwoman Joan Wagnon said in a statement that Brown-
back has modeled his administration after the recently indicted Texas governor, saying Perry has made deep cuts to public schools and overseen a troubling rise in childhood poverty.
Chris Pumpelly, spokesman for the Davis campaign, agreed.
"Sam Brownback keeps bringing other state' governors to Kansas, but there's little these other education-cutting governors can do to fix the damage Brownback's experiment has done to Kansas," Pumpelly said in an emailed statement.
Marijuana legalization effort begins in California
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SAN FRANCISCO — A national marijuana advocacy group took steps Wednesday to begin raising money for a campaign to legalize recreational pot use in California in 2016, a move with potential to add a dose of extra excitement to the presidential election year.
The Marijuana Policy Project filed paperwork with the California secretary of state's office registering a campaign committee to start accepting and spending contributions for a pot legalization initiative on the November 2016 state ballot, the group said.
The measure would be similar to those passed in 2012 by voters in Colorado and Washington, the first U.S. states to legalize commercial sales of marijuana to all adults over 21.
California, long the national leader in illegal marijuana production and home to a thriving, largely unregulated medical marijuana industry, is one of the 21 other states that currently allow marijuana use only for medical reasons. The drug remains illegal under federal law.
"Marijuana prohibition has had an enormously detrimental impact on California communities. It's been ineffective, wasteful and counterproductive. It's time for a more responsible approach." Marijuana Policy Project Executive Director Rob Kampia said. "Regulating and taxing marijuana similarly to alcohol just makes sense."
based group also has established campaign committees to back legalization measures in Arizona, Massachusetts and Nevada in 2016.
The Washington, D.C.
Voters in Oregon, Alaska and the District of Columbia will weigh in on marijuana legalization in November.
"When an issue is taken up in California, it becomes a national issue."
LYNNE LYMAN California Director of the Drug Policy Alliance
In 2010, California voters rejected a ballot initiative seeking to legalize recreational pot. The measure, just like the medical marjuana law the state approved in 1996, was the first of its kind. But along with opposition from law enforcement and elected officials, Proposition 19 faced unexpected resistance from medical marijuana users and outlaw growers in the state's so-called Emerald Triangle who worried legalization would lead to plummeting marijuana prices.
Marijuana Policy Project spokesman Mason Tvert predicted no such divisions would surface this time around.
Citing his group's experience in Colorado and the advantage of aiming for a presidential election year when voter turnout is higher, Tvert said legalization supporters would use the next two years
"Obviously, it's a whole different landscape in California, where it will cost probably as much or more to just get on the ballot as it did to run a winning campaign after getting on the ballot in Colorado," he said.
to build a broad-based coalition and craft ballot language that addresses concerns of particular constituencies.
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League of California Cities lobbyist Tim Cromartie, whose group oppose the state's 2010 pot legalization initiative and until this year fought legislative efforts to give the state greater oversight of medical marijuana, said Wednesday that it was too soon to say what kind of opposition, if any, would greet a 2016 campaign.
Lynne Lyman, California director of the Drug Policy Alliance, said her group expects to play a major role in the legalization effort and already has started raising money. Lyman said the goal is to have an initiative written by next summer. She estimated that a pro-legalization campaign would cost at least $8 million.
Even though California would be following in the steps of other states if a 2016 initiative passes, legalizing recreational marijuana use there would have far-reaching implications, Lyman said.
"When an issue is taken up in California, it becomes a national issue," she said. "What we really hope is that with a state this large taking that step, the federal government will be forced to address the ongoing issue of marijuana prohibition."
Judge delays Boston Marathon bombing trial
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BOSTON — A judge granted a two-month trial delay on Wednesday for Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, but denied a defense request to move his trial from Boston. Judge George O'Toole ruled that the trial will begin Jan. 5 instead of Nov. 3, but said there's no reason to assume in advance that a fair jury cannot be selected in Massachusetts.
Defense attorneys had asked that the trial be moved to Washington, D.C., citing extensive media coverage in Boston and evaluations of public sentiment by their experts. They also asked for a trial delay until at least September 2015, saying they have not had time to pre-
Prosecutors say he and his older brother placed two pressure cooker bombs that exploded near the marathon's finish line. Three people were killed and more than 260 were injured. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, died in a shootout with police several days later.
"Although media coverage in this case has been extensive, at this stage the defendant has failed to show that it has so inflamed and pervasively prejudiced the pool that a fair and impartial jury
Tsarnaev, 21, has pleaded not guilty to 30 federal charges. He could face the death penalty if convicted.
cannot be empaneled in this District," O'Toole wrote.
He also wrote that a short delay is warranted because of the large amount of evidence the defense has received from prosecutors. But he said, "An additional delay of ten months as requested by the defendant does not appear necessary."
pare for a November trial, and had been given less time than was granted in many other federal death penalty cases.
Prosecutors and defense attorneys agreed they would need to summon about 2,000 potential jurors, but they filed more than 100 pages of legal briefs arguing over moving the trial.
"It is doubtful whether a jury could be selected anywhere in the country whose members were wholly unaware of the Marathon bombings. The Constitution does not oblige them to be," O"Toole said.
Marwa Africana
Lecture Series
The Department of African and African-American Studies The University of Kansas Presents
"Barack Obama and the Future of Black Politics"
Alderson Auditorium - Kansan Union Thursday September 25, 2014 7:00 p.m.
Free and Open to the Public Book Signing and Reception to Follow
African and African-American Studies 785.864.3054
1440 Jayhawk Bhvd Bailey Hall Room 9
Lawrence KS 66045
afs ku.edu
Professor of Political Science
Director of Center on African-American Politics and Society
Columbia, University, New York
Sponsored by: Langston Hughes Center • Kansas African Studies Center American Studies Department • Political Science • Office of Multicultural Affairs School of Public Arts & Administration • College of Liberal Arts and Sciences