Tuesday, April 28, 2009 Print Edition

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tuesday april 28, 2009 blacksburg, va.

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news DATE SET FOR GOBBLERFEST 2009 The second annual Gobblerfest will take place Friday, August 28, University Unions and Student Activities announced Monday.

A street fair intended to welcome students to campus, the event will be free and take place on College Avenue.

Gobblerfest 2009 will begin at 2 p.m. and run until midnight, a part of the Hokie Hi program.

Registration is now online for businesses, student organizations and university departments.

sports TECH FOOTBALL HANDS OUT SPRING AWARDS At the annual spring game, the Tech football team gave out awards, recognizing certain players for their efforts during this year’s spring practice.

Quarterback Tyrod Taylor and defensive end Nekos Brown were the offensive and defensive recipients of the George Preas Award, presented to the most valuable players of spring practice. In addition, the Coaches Award, given to the players who had an exceptional spring, went to tight end Chris Drager and linebacker Demetrius Taylor.

WRIGHT NAMED ACC PITCHER OF THE WEEK For his performance in a win against No. 11 Miami, Tech pitcher Justin Wright was named the Atlantic Coast Conference Pitcher of the Week. Wright delivered an eight-inning, 10-strikeout performance on Saturday as the Hokies came away with a 7-4 victory.

Clinton stumps for McAuliffe in Roanoke ZACH CRIZER

ct news reporter Promising to pump money into education and green energy jobs, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe appeared with close friend and former president Bill Clinton Monday, outside Fire Station #1 in downtown Roanoke.

Clinton appeared with his former fundraiser but said it was more than a personal favor.

“Terry McAuliffe sees this governor race as an opportunity to give ordinary Virginians their fair share of the economic recovery,” Clinton said. “Terry McAuliffe was made for this moment in your history.”

He applauded President Barack Obama’s efforts to change the country’s economic policies and said McAuliffe could help implement changes in Virginia.

“A governor can have an enormous impact,” Clinton said.

Promoting campaign initiatives to improve education and decrease unemployment numbers in Virginia, McAuliffe said his views are unique in the race.

“In a tough economy, I think you put more money into education rather than take it out,” McAuliffe said.

“Because that is our future workforce.”

McAuliffe said improving early education would make an impact in the future.

“You need a governor who understands creating jobs is dependent upon our education system,” McAuliffe said.

Specifically, McAuliffe said Virginia “made an F on college affordability” and that he planned to funnel more money into higher education funding.

Another program McAuliffe plans to propose would cover college tuition if they served the state for two years.

“If you give us two years, we’ll pay off your college loans,” McAuliffe said.

Students in the program would serve in roles such as teachers or other public servants in “high need areas” of the state.

He said spending more money on schools would cut down on the money

DANIEL LIN/SPPS

While campaining for Terry McAuliffe, President Bill Clinton compared his experiences as president to that of being governor of Arkansas. spent on prisons.

“Quit building prisons and let’s start building classrooms,” McAuliffe said.

McAuliffe hopes to offer pre-kindergarten to the entire population and create smaller classes in early elementary classes.

Echoing an initiative of President Barack Obama, McAuliffe said he wanted to increase pay for teachers.

“Let’s pay our teachers the national average,” McAuliffe said. “If you go to the District of Columbia or Maryland, they make $14,000 more than our teachers.”

In addition to creating more work-

ers, McAuliffe hopes to create jobs in Virginia by expanding the alternative energy industry.

“We could light up millions of homes with wind farms along Virginia Beach,” McAuliffe said.

He said he would not accept campaign contributions from Dominion Power Company, citing their unwillingness to work on green energy.

“I am the only candidate who will not take a check from Dominion Power,” McAuliffe said. “I’ll make sure Virginia is the number one state in the country for green jobs.”

Over 200 people braved unseason-

Dietrick lawn serves as AJ staging ground

tomorrow’s weather

ably warm temperatures to attend the campaign event, including several Virginia Tech students actively aiding McAuliffe’s campaign.

Sporting orange and maroon as they stood on the risers behind the podium, five Virginia Tech students work as interns for the McAuliffe campaign’s Roanoke office.

Other points of emphasis of McAuliffe’s speech included building a light rail transportation system to run between Washington D.C. and Richmond.

It was the second campaign event of the day for the gubernatorial can-

didate and his presidential supporter.

They appeared earlier in the day in Richmond.

McAuliffe, former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, hails from Fairfax.

He will participate in a debate Tuesday in Danville, and then in a debate at the Lyric in Blacksburg on Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. that will be sponsored by the Collegiate Times, the Huffington Post and the blogs FireDogLake and Not Larry Sabato.

Tickets are available at the ticket office on the first floor of Squires Student Center.

news in brief CALEB FLEMING

ct news editor The Chemistry/Physics building has been named Hahn Hall —North Wing for T. Marshall Hahn Jr., a well-respected former Virginia Tech president.

Hahn served as the university’s president from 1962 to 1974 and is known for fully expanding enrollment to include women, tripling the number of undergraduate students,

and eliminating the mandate that freshmen and sophomores enroll in the Corps of Cadets program.

Hahn Hall — North Wing is the second building to be named after the former president, resting adjacent to the current Hahn Hall used for chemistry research. Hahn Hall will now be renamed Hahn Hall — South Wing.

Tech’s Board of Visitors approved the resolutions on Thursday, April 23.

Relay For Life

SCATTERED T-STORMS high 73, low 55

corrections If you see something in today’s paper that needs to be corrected, please e-mail our public editor at publiceditor@collegiatetimes.com, or call 540.231.9865.

coming up TOMORROW’S CT Travel guru Paul Frommer came to Tech last night. Read about his exploits in a Q&A tomorrow.

See a photo gallery detailing Bill Clinton’s campaign trip to Roanoke. Clinton was helping McAuliffe run for governor.

index News.....................2 0pinions................3

Classifieds..............5 Sports....................4 Sudoku..................5

An independent, student-run newspaper serving the Virginia Tech community since 1903 106th year • issue 53

MARK UMANSKY/SPPS

Shelters on Dietrick Lawn will house contractors and renovation staff during the massive Ambler-Johnston hall renovations over the next three years.

AMBLER-JOHNSTON HALL WILL HAVE MAJOR CHANGES IN THE NEXT FEW YEARS JUSTIN GRAVES

ct news reporter Dietrick lawn has been cut nearly in half. About 40 percent of the grass is now home to a shelter, which will be housing numerous contractors and renovation staff over the next three years.

It is one small part of a very large Ambler-Johnston complex renovation.

Ed Spencer, vice president of Student Affairs, said what people on campus see for now is essentially the staging process of a much larger project.

“That is the beginning of the staging area for AmblerJohnston complex renovation project,” Spencer said.

“Whenever you’re carrying out a large renovation or construction project, this is something you need. That building will be the offices that the contractors will be using during the three years that this project will be going on.”

Dietrick lawn has also been earmarked as a potential site

for a new residence hall in a few years, but no definite plans have yet been made by the university.

The West and East AJ project, as a whole, will take about three years to complete.

The renovation of the east side of the complex will begin this summer. In terms of residential wings, the renovations are similar, but the connector wing included in the first half of the project adds square footage and represents the contrast in completion times.

“The connector wing in east AJ is going to close on May 16th, when we shut down after commencement, and will remain closed until August 2011,” Spencer said. “That fall, east AJ and the connector wing will reopen. Then in May 2011, west AJ will have closed and will be closed until August 2012 when it will reopen upon completion of renovations.”

By the fall of 2012, when west AJ reopens, Tech will have added more than 1,300 beds to its on-campus housing stash,

and all rooms in the AJ complex will be air conditioned.

“Some of this project is going to be a major gutting because we’re seriously changing the spaces while other parts will just be renovations and slight modifications,” Spencer said. “The biggest part will be the heating, ventilation and air conditioning system, as AJ is going to have AC for the first time.”

Other changes to the building include the creation of some seminar-style meeting rooms and classrooms and new study lounges.

Some rooms will also be converted to suite-style, the living arrangement of current Tech students living in newer residence halls such as PeddrewYates and Payne Halls.

“Bathrooms will have more privacy, and the study lounges, fitness rooms, and mailrooms will all be updated. Meeting rooms and seminar-style classrooms will also be added,” Spencer said. “Some work will also be done on the exterior of the building in terms of aesthetic improvements. We are doing some corrective work to the Hokie Stone, similar to the work done at Career Services and McComas.”

DANIEL LIN/SPPS

Relay For Life took place from 6 p.m. on Friday, April 24, until 6 a.m. on Saturday, April 25. As of Saturday morning, $482,577.06 was raised by 5,304 registered participants on 484 teams.

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editor: caleb fleming email: nrvnews@collegiatetimes.com phone: 540.231.9865 office hours: tth 2 p.m. - 4 p.m.

april 28, 2009

editor: sara mitchell email: universitynews@collegiatetimes.com phone: 540.231.9865 office hours: mw 1:30 p.m. - 3:30 p.m.

Penn State Food Administration declares health emergency in swine fl u outbreak Services to visit Virginia Tech TONY PUGH

mcclatchy newspapers

RACHEL WEBB

ct news staff writer Students will not be the only people studying on reading day.

Officials from Pennsylvania State University will be touring Virginia Tech’s dining facilities in an effort to improve their own.

On May 7, eight Penn State officials will be observing the practices of Tech’s dining services.

Ivy Awards and consistently high rankings from the Princeton Review have been getting the university’s dining services noticed.

After a recent visit from Michigan State University, Pennsylvania State University will be the latest to visit Tech’s facilities.

“They’re one of the best in the business, and we would like to come down and see some of the newer additions to the program,” said Lisa Wandel, director of residential dining at Penn State.

Penn State is looking to renovate some of its dining halls in the next two to three years.

Wandel said looking at other schools’ dining halls would help formulate new ideas on how to remodel Penn State’s dining buildings.

“The neat thing about college food services is that you’re not right across the street like restaurants,” Wandel said. “It’s nice to be able to share ideas without being competitive.”

Although Penn State’s undergraduate population is three times the size of Tech’s, Wandel said observing other programs is about building a basic foundation on which Penn State’s concerns can be addressed.

Both schools are members of the National Association of College and University Food Services.

Wandel said instead of starting off from scratch, schools should

look at other people’s ideas, modify them, and make them even better.

“Instead of recreating the wheel, we can look at what the last guy did, change it and make it our own,” Wandel said. “Then someone else can take what we do and do the same thing.

Eventually, the original creator can look at what changes it has gone through too and see something that looks completely different from what they started out with.”

D2 and West End dining halls are the most popular destinations for visiting delegations.

Jessica Filip, training and project coordinator with Dining Services said Penn State officials in particular would start the tour at 9 a.m. and end at 4 p.m. Excluding Shultz, they will visit all dining halls on campus.

Other than dining halls, Penn State will also visit Southgate Center, a centralized preparation facility for all of the food that students access on campus.

Lane Stadium is also a planned stop. The director of concessions at Penn State’s Beaver Stadium will be looking at Lane Stadium to see what we offer there.

In the past five years, over 60 universities have come to see Tech’s dining operations.

Most often, these schools are remodeling a dining center and comparing what others have done with their facilities.

Both Virginia Tech’s and Penn State’s dining services are selfoperated, not contracted out to a company. “(It is) impressive when such large institutions look to Virginia Tech as an example for their services,” said Ed Spencer, vice president of student affairs. “It speaks volumes.”

WASHINGTON — Warning the worst is yet to come, U.S. officials Sunday declared the rapid spread of swine flu to be a public health emergency, and freed up 12.5 million doses of antiviral medication to help fight the disease, which has now infected 20 people in five states.

The move comes as state and local authorities, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the international health community step up public awareness, testing and surveillance in an effort to stop the disease before it becomes a global epidemic.

On Sunday, four more cases were confirmed in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia.

In Mexico, where the outbreak originated, nearly 90 people have died and thousands of others have become ill from swine flu in the last several weeks.

The World Health Organization said the new swine flu strain has “pandemic potential.” A flu pandemic occurs when a new influenza virus emerges, people have little or no immunity to it and there’s no vaccine for it.

No deaths have been reported in the United States, but officials confirmed Sunday that eight students at a New York City high school tested positive for the disease after dozens had complained of flu-like symptoms. Some of the students had recently returned from a spring break trip to Cancun, Mexico. The school has been closed as a precaution.

Authorities have confirmed seven more cases in California, two in Kansas and Texas and one in Ohio. More cases are expected in the coming days “As we continue to look for cases, I expect that we’re going to find them.

We’ve ramped up our surveillance around the country to try and understand better what is the scope, what is the magnitude of this outbreak,” said Dr. Richard Besser, the acting director of the CDC. President Barack Obama is getting regular briefings and updates on the outbreak and the steps being taken to address the problem. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is heading the federal effort to deal with

the outbreak, but numerous other departments, including Health and Human Services and Agriculture, are also involved.

The virus spreading throughout the U.S. appears to be the same strain that has infected Mexico, but health officials are unsure why the U.S. outbreaks haven’t been as severe. To date, all U.S. flu victims have recovered, and only one has been hospitalized.

That could change, however, since infectious diseases, and the flu virus in particular, are unpredictable, Besser said.

“Given the reports out of Mexico, I would expect that over time, we’re going to see more severe disease in this country,” Besser warned. . . . “We do think that this will continue to spread, but we are taking aggressive actions to minimize the impact on people’s health.”

A “pandemic severity index,” developed by the CDC, ranks flu outbreaks in terms of expected deaths and is modeled after the hurricane warning system the National Weather Service uses.

The mildest flu strains, those expected to kill fewer than 90,000 Americans, would be known as Category 1 outbreaks. The most severe, a Category 5 flu epidemic, could kill more than 1.8 million U.S. residents.

Sunday’s health emergency declaration frees up federal, state, and local resources for disease prevention. The move allows agencies to conduct diagnostic tests, if necessary, on young children. It also OK’s the release of 12.5 million courses of antiviral medications Tamiflu and Relenza from the nation’s strategic stockpiles. The drugs will go to states in need, with priority given to those with confirmed cases.

The Department of Defense is making an additional 7 million courses of Tamiflu available, said Napolitano.

Both Tamiflu and Relenza help lessen the severity of flu symptoms and shorten the course of the illness, but it’s unclear if the drugs will work against the swine flu, Besser said. Since there’s no vaccine for swine flu, health officials are trying to determine whether a vaccine could be developed, Besser said.

In addition, the U.S. Department of Agriculture is screening and testing livestock to make sure the food supply isn’t infected, Napolitano said. She added the disease can’t be contracted from eating

OLIVIER DOULIERY/MCT

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs briefs the media at the White House on the government’s response to swine influenza yesterday. pork.

Travelers entering the United States from infected locations will be subject to “passive surveillance,” in which they’ll asked questions about their health.

Those with symptoms will be isolated, given protective equipment and could be subject to further testing, Napolitano said. Although the State Department hasn’t issued an official travel advisory for Mexico, that could change.

“Right now, we don’t think the facts warrant a more active testing or screening of passengers coming in from Mexico,” Napolitano said. . . . “But again, this is a changing dynamic that we may increase or decrease that as the facts change over the next 24, 48, 72 hours.”

She urged travelers to check the Department of State Web site for updates.

While the source of the virus is unclear, Besser said it doesn’t look as if bio-terrorism was a factor in the outbreak. “There’s nothing that we have seen in our work that would suggest anything but a naturally occurring event,” Besser said.

He added the swine flu strain is like other new flu strains that have emerged.

“It’s an assortment — it’s got genetic components from a number of sources, including human, swine and avian

sources. And that’s something that you see with new strains,” Besser said.

WHAT YOU SHOULD DO: Health officials are urging people who have developed flu-like symptoms after traveling to areas where the disease has emerged to contact their doctors to determine what testing and treatment is appropriate.

They say all people also should cover their noses and mouths with a tissue when coughing or sneezing; wash hands often with soap and water, especially after a cough or sneeze and use alcohol-based hand cleaners when possible.

Avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth since germs cans easily spread that way. The CDC also advises avoiding contact with sick people.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano urged all citizens to help curb the spread of the disease.

“The government can’t solve this alone,” she said Sunday. “We need everybody in the United States to take some responsibility here. If you are sick, stay home. Wash your hands, take all of those reasonable measures; that will help us mitigate, contain how many people actually get sick in our country.”

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editor: laurel colella email: opinionseditor@collegiatetimes.com phone: 540.231.9865 office hours: mw 11 a.m. - 1 p.m.

april 28, 2009

EDITORIAL

Getting to the bottom of torture and truth The following editorial appeared in the Chicago Tribune on Wednesday, April 22: President Barack Obama made a tough call — and the right one — last week by releasing secret Justice Department documents detailing interrogation methods for extracting information from terror suspects. He also was right to balance that release by assuring CIA operatives who did the questioning they wouldn’t be prosecuted for following rules that had been set by Justice lawyers.

So we now know, in stomachchurning detail, exactly how many times interrogators used the near-drowning technique known as waterboarding on a small number of high-profile terrorists (183 times in one month). We know about how long they could deprive suspects of sleep (up to eight days) or how they would be allowed to prey on one suspect’s fear of insects by stuffing him in a box with a caterpillar (although that didn’t happen). We know the prisoners could be stripped of their clothes, fed nothing but liquid and thrown against a wall 30 consecutive times.

Obama was clearly hoping the whole did-we-or-didn’t-we-torture debate would flare and fizzle after the release of the memos.

He initially said he wanted to “move forward.” But he may already be backtracking, saying Tuesday he wouldn’t rule out taking action against the lawyers who set the legal guidelines for the interrogations. Obama was right the first time. This needs to be put in the rearview mirror, and soon.

Before Americans can do that, however, they need a more complete picture of what was done in the name of protecting the nation against another attack after Sept. 11, 2001. The memos released so far detail only half of the ledger. We know the costs, paid in policies that may or may not have crossed the line into the torture of suspects.

What we haven’t seen are the

alleged benefits. What kind of intelligence did those interrogations yield and what plots, if any, were disrupted because of it? Some of that information is becoming public: In a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece recently, former CIA Director Michael Hayden and former Atty. Gen. Michael Mukasey described how one terrorist was coerced into disclosing information that enabled the capture of Ramzi Binalshibh, one of the planners of the Sept. 11 attacks, and other senior terrorists.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney, a harsh critic of the Obama administration’s release of the Justice memos, and no friend of government transparency, now wants more secret information disclosed. He essentially argues Americans can better evaluate the use of harsh techniques if they know what the interrogations yielded.

Cheney claims there are memos that would “show specifically what we gained as a result of this activity.”

Effectiveness is not the only criterion by which we judge questioning techniques: If it was, then cruel and brutal treatment would be routine for American interrogators, because it often yields valuable intelligence. But that is not the case. For all the furor, these techniques were used “against only a small number of hard-core prisoners who successfully resisted other forms of interrogation ...” Mukasey and Hayden wrote.

Obama administration officials have disavowed some tactics, such as waterboarding, as torture, and have promised that U.S. interrogators won’t use them anymore.

Knowing those limits may help terrorists train to withstand interrogations. But this debate about how much torture information to release isn’t about what America’s enemies will anticipate if they’re captured.

This debate is about the limits a democratic society sets so it does not sink to the level of those who seek to destroy it.

Gay marriage does not accurately depict equality KEVIN GILLISPIE regular columnist Outside the intellectual nursery of academia, nobody cares about your feelings. Generally, feelings are tolerated in the real world, but this is merely a diplomatic act intended to keep the gears of commerce from grinding down.

Yet when the outspoken members of the left are confronted with views contrary to their own they reference their emotional response as reasoned argument.

So we have Exemplar-In-Chief, Perez Hilton. A classless man-child who thinks the appropriate response to someone who disagrees with him is to slander her as a dumb b-word (but only because he had the good taste to not call her a c-word). I would probably agree that his question to Miss California was an appropriate one.

But a contestant should be judged upon her ability to articulate a position, not her ability to pander.

I see all this as speaking to a polarizing generality between those on the left and those on the right. It is emotionally uncomfortable — in this era of social and linguistic political-correctness — to entertain any differences between the sexes. And the more strongly a person believes in such equality the more likely they will be found gravitating to the left, ideologically.

This is the great impasse. Are men and women fundamentally the same?

The left says yes; the right says no.

And the question can never be about what either side “wants” — that is an emotional plea. It must be about what “is.” A question of greater magnitude than most recognize.

For the sake of argument, let’s say science somehow proves that men and women are no different; then gay marriage is a no-brainer. However, if gay marriage is universally adopted, society must be prepared to accept other forms of marriage. If the type of parents a child has raising them doesn’t matter, then why should the number? Do children with a single parent grow up to be lesser individuals than those children with two?

Why not four parents?

If two divorce and remarry then a child would have four parents. Why not let them all live in the same house — especially if there are a large number of children. It would be economically prudent. Not to mention the benefit of spreading the responsibility of child rearing around.

Unlike gay marriage, polygamy actually has historical precedence.

Hilton, in an interview with Larry King, denied the emotional context of gay marriage saying, “I think it has nothing do with compassion and it has everything to do with equality.” He claims that this nation was founded on equality. In a non-specific sense, I would agree.

But that form of equality was about a person’s creation, and not their outcome. Moreover, this was a political ideal — not a social contract.

Now, if my position couldn’t be extrapolated from the above, let me

be clear: I don’t believe gay marriage is an appropriate pursuit of an intellectually honest society. Neither is polygamy. I also believe that I am not equal with others.

I believe that there are people out there — of both sexes, of all ethnicities — that are better than me and are more deserving of certain opportunities than I ever will be. Just as there are those that are less deserving. And that does not offend me, because I am not so naïve as to believe that people are monolithically unidimensional, that one issue could determine a state of worth.

And I can accept this so readily because I don’t let what I “want to be” dominate “what is.” Men and women are different — to the benefit of the species — and that truth, that simple, politically unnerving truth, doesn’t hurt me. It does not belittle me, and it does not render me inferior.

For those of you who advocate for gay marriage, you must first prove the interchangeability of men and women before you could hope to make a valid argument. Love is not argument. Love in marriage is a luxury of societal stability. But that stability is predicated on not denying our nature. This is the core of the debate, and we must be intellectually honest about that.

(As an aside, I’m left wondering whether Perez Hilton feels the same about Obama. Our president publicly announced that he was not in favor of gay marriage. Is the man that has inspired so many messianic depictions of his likeness a social Neanderthal?)

I am writing in response to the letter titled: “Making purchasing local food more realistic for students” (CT, April 20).

Being concerned with food budget is not a crime. What I find worrisome, however, is when other eaters do not eat locally based on misconstrued or uninformed opinions. Every food at Farms and Fields Project is not local.

I wish it all were, but there are many obstacles. Firstly, we face challenges of seasonality. During the school year, many things simply are not growing here in Virginia and the region. In normal circumstances, we would use canned or flash frozen food.

Virginia presently lacks the facilities to do this on a large scale. This forces us to ship food from far away locales.

Secondly, some of Virginia Tech’s purchasing policies do not allow us to buy plentiful local foods (which, may I add, are quite cheap). Form

your own opinions on this issue, but I personally bought about two pounds of fresh local snap peas today for $1.50, a local bunch of leafy lettuce for the same price, and a pound of organic carrots for $.99. I loaded myself down with groceries from Eats today for about $15.

I dislike basing this article fully on the scope of price because one mustn’t look at the issue of “local food” or eating sustainably as a narrow scope with one basis. It is so much more than that. I encourage other students who want to educate themselves more about the mission of Farms and Fields (which includes sustainable and organic foods that are not local), as well as connect to many valuable resources about sustainable food to visit http://farmsandfield sproject.wordpress.com/ — the official blog. I would also encourage students to contact me and join the Virginia Tech Sustainable Food Corps.

Elena Dulys-Nusbaum sophomore, environmental policy and planning

Your letter could be here.

E-mail us at: opinionseditor@collegiatetimes.com

Collegiate Times Editorial Staff Editor in Chief David Grant Managing Editors David Harries, Sara Spangler Public Editor Cate Summers News Editors Caleb Fleming, Sara Mitchell News Reporters Gordon Block, Zach Crizer, Justin Graves, Kelsey Heiter, Riley Prendergast, T. Rees Shapiro News Staff Writers Debra Houchins, Phillipp Kotlaba, Gabe McVey, Will Thomas, Ryan Trapp Features Editor Bethany Buchanan Features Reporters Topher Forhecz, Teresa Tobat, Jonathan Yi Features Staff Writers Ryan Arnold, Mary Anne Carter, Drew Jackson, Tom Minogue, Alex Pettingell Opinions Editors Laurel Colella Sports Editors Thomas Emerick, Brian Wright Sports Reporters Joe Crandley, Justin Long, Ed Lupien, Melanie Wadden Sports Staff Writers Garrett Busic, Matt Collette, Lindsay Faulkner, Hattie Francis, Alex Jackson, Mike Littier Copy Editors Erin Corbey, Thandiwe Ogbonna, Kristen Walker, Michelle Rivera Layout Designers Go-Eun Choi, Velechia Hardnett, Kelly Harrigan, Rachel McGiboney, Mina Noorbakhsh, Josh Son Illustrator Mina Noorbakhsh Multimedia Editor Phillip Murillas Multimedia Producer Candice Chu Multimedia Reporters Kevin Anderson, Peter Velz Online Director Sam Eberspacher Collegiate Times Business Staff Business Manager Ryan McConnell College Media Solutions Staff Advertising Director Patrick Fitzgerald Asst Advertising Directors Tyler Ervin Jenna Given, Katelynn Reilly Ads Production Manager Anika Stickles Asst Production Manager Allison Bhatta Ads Production/Creation Breanna Benz, Jennifer DiMarco, Rebecca Smeenk, Lindsay Smith, Katie Sonntag, Lara Treadwell National Account Executive Kaelynn Kurtz Account Executives Nik Bando, Brandon Collins, Chris Cunningham, Lee Eliav, Judi Glass, Kendall Kapetanakis, David Morgan, Marcello Sandoval, Arianna Rouhani, Jennifer Vaughn Assistant Account Executives Madeline Abram, Katie Berkel, Diane Revalski, Devon Steiner Marketing Manager Amanda Sparks Office Manager Kaelynn Kurtz Student Publication Photo Staff Director of Photography Sally Bull Business Manager Paul Platz

Voice your opinion. Readers are encouraged to send letters and comments to the Collegiate Times.

LETTER TO THE EDITOR Don’t only consider price when deciding to eat locally

The Collegiate Times is an independent student-run newspaper serving the Virginia Tech community since 1903

NATE BEELER/THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

Media has become fascinated with struggles of the underdog Dressed comfortably in a gold dress with her hair looking inappropriately groomed, a 47year-old Scottish woman snagged BEN a microphone and undesirably WOODY insinuated her regular sexual prowess. columnist She laughed confidently as judges Simon Cowell, Amanda Holden and Piers Morgan asked quasi-mockingly why she wanted to be famous and why she even considered competing in the event.“Because nobody has ever given me a chance,” said the Scot through her thick accent. Audience members opted out of concealing their low standards about Susan Doyle’s yet-tobe-heard performance of “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Miserables.

However, as soon as she belted out the first line of the song, Simon Cowell’s eyes became as large as the smiles across the faces of everyone who watched the video on YouTube for the first time.

Within the first stanza’s completion, the entire Clyde Auditorium in Glasgow, Scotland was cheering. I was cheering, too, sitting on Torg Bridge and being shushed by confused and irritated studiers.

The masters of ceremonies for the competition, Ant and Dec, insist that you “never saw it coming, did you?”

After her stunning performance, the auditorium had been transformed into a collection of amazed and caught-off-guard spectators.

“From the moment you came onstage, I knew that you were going to be great,” Cowell joked.

And that’s a shame.

Since Susan Boyle’s performance at the Clyde Auditorium was aired three weeks ago, she has been the focus of the morning talk show cycle,

promoting the message of the dangers of presumptuousness.

Jeanne McManus, an occasional contributor to The Washington Post, did not hide her low expectations for the 47-year-old contestant. “The eye-rolling public and the three jaded judges were waiting for her to squawk like a duck,” McManus wrote.

And so was I. So were my friends. We all were.

It was apparent the Boyle would stride — albeit neither elegantly nor gracefully — to win “Britain’s Got Talent” until Aug 25, when 10-yearold Hollie Steel jumped on-stage with her typical youthful effervescence and classic pink tutu.

Piers Morgan greeted her and bid her good luck, which she apparently didn’t need. After hopping on stage for a couple measures, Steel reared back and threw the audience the second largest surprise of the contest.

The little girl could flat out sing.

Once again, the audience was thrown into a frenzy and the judges were amazed. Before picking up her obligatory unanimous “yes” vote, the judges brought up their shock.

“I just didn’t expect that voice to come out of a tiny little thing,” guest judge Kelly Brook said.

With Piers and Amanda heaping on praise for Steel, Cowell recovered the cynic train’s levers and tooted the superficial horn.

Before allocating the praise she deserved, Cowell criticized her ordinary ballerina outfit and expected her to just be another one of the kids who wanted to be famous.

“But you really don’t know how wonderful you are,” he said afterward. But among Susan Boyle, Hollie Steel and 12-year-old boy Shaheen Jafargholi, the winner of this contest will be Susan Boyle.

These days, the media has become fascinated with the struggles of the underdog reaching the top. Whether the topic is a new book by first woman

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, the completely unnecessary amount of election memorabilia of Barack Obama, or even the continued exaltation the New York Giants received after their David-and-Goliath win over the previously undefeated New England Patriots, there will always be a market for these feel-good stories.

Hollie Steel is an impressively powerful singing force packaged in the tiny framework of a fourth-grade schoolgirl, while Jafargholi’s flair and showmanship captivated the audience very effectively. Unfortunately for these two contestants, Boyle will win.

Firstly, Tyra Banks is probably salivating at the multiple opportunities to illustrate the capability of the less-attractive-than-a-model demographic.

Secondly, think of the marketability! I bet clothing designers, cosmetics manufacturers and similar industries are banging on Blackburn, Scotland’s doors, looking for Susan Boyle to clean up. Not only that, but her story wouldn’t be that difficult to transform into a “Slumdog Millionaire” sort of movie.

Thirdly, Boyle has already gone on and recorded a few original tracks.

The first two reasons are complete hullaballoo. The superficiality around the entertainment industry is failing to pick up on the moral of her story.

With dedication, courage and an ounce of talent, anyone can achieve his or her dreams.

But much to the chagrin of many of my contemporaries, Susan Boyle has already gone out and dyed her hair since her world debut.

Stop there, Susan! Preserve yourself!

Don’t change yourself because of the media’s interest in an unattractive woman with a beautiful voice.

We admire your courage to be yourself. We admire your refusal to hide yourself. We also really, really love your voice.

365 Squires Student Center Blacksburg, Va. 24061 Fax: (540) 231-9151 opinionseditor@collegiatetimes.com Students must include name, year, major and phone number. Faculty and staff must include name, position and department. All other submissions must include name, residence, and if applicable, relationship to Virginia Tech (i.e. alumni, parent, etc.). Letters should not exceed 300 words, and should be in MS Word (.doc) format if possible.

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4 sports

editor: thomas emerick, brian wright email: sportseditor@collegiatetimes.com phone: 540.231.9865 office hours: w 12:30 p.m. - 2:30 p.m.; t 11:30 a.m. - 1:30 p.m.

april 28, 2009

sports in brief WILLAMS, ROBERTS STAR IN ANNUAL SPRING GAME

BASEBALL DROPS SERIES AGAINST HURRICANES

Virginia Tech's spring season concluded on Saturday afternoon with the maroon team edging the white team by a score of 13-7 in the annual spring game held at Lane Stadium.

While the game wasn’t filled with the intensity of a mid-season ACC matchup and the Hokies still have months to go before they play a game that counts, the excitement of Tech football was definitely back on Saturday.

That excitement happened early on before the estimated 41,000 in attendance — the largest crowd to ever watch a Tech spring game.

In the first quarter, redshirt freshman quarterback Ju-Ju Clayton hooked up with redshirt freshman tailback Ryan Williams on a screen pass, which he took 56 yards through the white team's defense for a maroon touchdown.

Williams led the Hokies by rushing for 86 yards on 10 carries and reeling in two receptions for an impressive 66 yards and a touchdown.

The white team responded quickly, however, with a scoring drive led by junior starting quarterback Tyrod Taylor.

The junior capped a nine-play, 80yard drive by hooking up with sophomore wide out Dyrell Roberts in the corner of the end zone for a three-yard touchdown.

Taylor finished the day completing 16 of 33 passes for 188 yards and a score. He also rushed for 39 yards on nine attempts.

Taylor and Roberts connected three times for 52 yards — including the touchdown — and gave fans hope for a possibly electrifying passing combination this year.

Roberts also returned a kick 41 yards in the first quarter and also had a nineyard punt return, showing the quickness that Beamer has praised.

In the third quarter, though, the maroon team scored what would be the game-winning touchdown when redshirt freshman Antoine Hopkins picked up a fumble by freshman tailback Zac Evans and returned it 20 yards to put the maroon team up 13-7.

That was all the maroon team needed as the white team couldn't find the end zone in the fourth quarter despite a valiant effort by Taylor, who came just yards from tying the game as time expired.

– Alex Jackson

The Virginia Tech baseball team faced off against the No. 11 Miami Hurricanes this weekend, picking up one win and losing twice.

The Hokies jumped out to a quick 1-0 lead Friday in the first inning, but then managed only two hits for the entirety of the contest.

Starting pitcher Rhett Ballard pitched five innings and only allowed two runs, but the Hurricanes didn’t need much offense as they won the game 4-1.

Saturday proved to be a much better outing for the Hokies.

For the second season in a row, sophomore Justin Wright pitched an incredible game against Miami, totaling eight innings and 10 strikeouts and allowing only one run to lead Tech to a 7-4 victory.

The Tech hitters struck out 16 times in the game, but the lineup managed to bat around in the fourth inning to produce six runs.

After two days of containing the Hurricane bats, the Tech pitching staff faltered on Sunday, giving up 11 runs to lose the final game of the series 11-3.

In addition to the pitching woes, the Tech hitters also struggled, connecting on only five hits while striking out nine times.

The team now stands at 25-17 overall and 10-13 in the Atlantic Coast Conference.

Tech plays host to High Point and Radford on Tuesday and Wednesday respectively at 5:30 p.m. before traveling to Tallahassee, Fla., to play a weekend series against the Florida State Seminoles.

– Joe Crandley

BRIAN CLAY/SPPS

With no passing options available, quarterback Tyrod Taylor scambles out of the pocket. Taylor went 16-for-33 with 188 yards passing on Saturday.

MARYLAND WINS ACC TOURNAMENT AT THOMPSON FIELD The Maryland Terrapins edged the Duke Blue Devils, 12-11, on Sunday to capture the 2009 Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament championship. Virginia Tech hosted the event, and all games were played this weekend at Thompson Field.

The win gave the top-seeded Terrapins (18-0) their sixth tournament title and an automatic berth into the NCAA tournament.

Maryland started the game with four goals in the first 10 minutes of regulation. No. 3 seed Duke (13-5) struck back, netting five unanswered to take the lead at halftime.

The Blue Devils pushed the lead to 8-4 with 23 minutes left, but the

Terps soon embarked on an 8-1 run of their own. Over that 18 minute span, Maryland grabbed a 12-9 advantage. A key member of that run was Caitlyn McFadden, who garnered the tournament’s most valuable player award. Her goal with 8:19 to go put Maryland in front.

It never lost the lead from then on out as Duke could only cut the deficit to 12-11.

McFadden scored four goals on the afternoon, while Sarah Mollison and Karri Ellen Johnson each had two.

For Duke, Sarah Bullard scored four times. Caroline Cryer added a pair of goals to go along with three assists.

Maryland’s road to the championship started out with a 15-7 semi-final win on Friday against No. 4-seed Virginia. The Cavaliers opened the tournament by beating the Hokies, 13-5, one day earlier.

– Brian Wright

Saturday. However, Maryland forged ahead with five unanswered and a 5-4 Terrapin victory.

Kenzie Roark pitched five scoreless innings before Maryland was able to get all of its points in the final two frames.

She finished the game allowing three earned runs on nine hits with two walks and five strikeouts. Jenna Rhodes anchored the Tech offense with three hits and a school-record four stolen bases.

Tech flipped roles with Maryland in the second game by staging a comefrom-behind win of their own.

Although the Hokies jumped out to a 4-1 lead to start the second game, it looked as if they would let another one slip away when Maryland took control with a four-run fifth.

But in the bottom of the last inning, Erin Ota and Charisse Mariconda

scored on a Jessica Everhart walk-off double to win the game, 6-5. Everhart had two hits and two RBIs, and Ota added two hits of her own.

On Sunday, Tech was unable to overcome three unearned runs in the fourth inning, eventually losing 4-1.

Beth Walker generated all of the offense for the Hokies with a solo blast in the second inning.

Rhodes also had two hits for the Hokies and was the only Tech player with a multi-hit game.

Roark threw a complete game while allowing just one earned run on seven hits to go along with a walk and three strikeouts.

Six Hokie seniors were honored before their final home game: Walker, Mariconda, Ota, Everhart, Rhodes and Kim Jalm.

– Chad Mosesso

VISITING MARYLAND TAKES TWO IN SOFTBALL SET The Virginia Tech softball team lost two of three games against Maryland in the final weekend of Atlantic Coast Conference play, including a loss Sunday on Senior Day at Tech Softball Park.

The Hokies finish their conference season at 8-10, and will await their opponent in the ACC tournament.

Tech opened up with a 4-0 lead after five innings in the first game on

MICHAEL MCDERMOTT/SPPS

Senior third baseman Charisse Mariconda went 3-for-6 in a Saturday doubleheader against Maryland. The Hokies finished 8-10 in ACC play.

page

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april 28, 2009

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editor: thomas emerick, brian wright email: sportseditor@collegiatetimes.com phone: 540.231.9865 office hours: w 12:30 p.m. - 2:30 p.m.; t 11:30 a.m. - 1:30 p.m.

april 28, 2009

After spring game outing, there’s plenty to love about Williams A current blew through the mountains on April 25, 2009, and made its way through Blacksburg.

It was the smell of spring football.

JUSTIN You know it — it’s LONG the combination of sports food, spilled beer reporter and those first 81degree sweat drops of that obese man who is unluckily sitting in front of you.

Some looked forward to the annual spring game, while others simply dismissed it as meaningless.

After all, it is just what it is: a gigantic football tease. It lures in your interest and gets you pumped up during the pre-game tailgate, until you realize after the game is over that we are still 19 weeks away from that colossal opening game match-up with Alabama.

That’s the same game that you and all of your friends recently lost the student ticket lottery to and now have to donate a kidney for a seat in Atlanta’s Georgia Dome.

And sure, the game is sloppy, as evidenced by Brent Bowden having three punts partially blocked in the first half.

It’s also slightly restrained, when the defense can only play man coverage while rushing five, and while junior

quarterback Tyrod Taylor jogs on the field in his yellow “don’t hit me” jersey.

But, man, can that Ryan Williams run with the football.

This year, 41,000 rabid Hokie fanatics showed up to Lane Stadium to see the highly-touted running back that has received almost all of the publicity coverage this spring coming off of his redshirt freshman season, and by the looks of it now, deservedly so.

Sure, his 56-yard touchdown reception from Ju-Ju Clayton, where he patiently followed his blockers and then broke away, juking three hopeless defenders before taking it to the house was impressive. And his 36-yard rush where he bounced it outside and showed off his quickness was pretty stellar as well.

However, what was most impressive was how he ran between the tackles.

The great tailbacks keep their legs churning, even when it looks like they are stood up and about to be taken down. And that’s just what Williams showed on Saturday.

“Even when Williams first got here, he was running the ball hard,” said sophomore wide receiver Dyrell Roberts. “Now that he has a year in the weight room under the belt, he’s stronger and faster. We’re really excited to get the ball in his hands.”

“I run hard naturally,” Williams said.

“And I think a lot of people don’t see

that, because all they hear is the explosive and the exciting Ryan Williams. … A lot of people don’t realize that I can run between the tackles, and I can break tackles when I need to.”

Taylor, who received a leadership and a most valuable performer award at halftime, finished the game 16-for-33 with 188 yards and one touchdown. He looked like a well-rounded quarterback ready to fuel this team through the dog days of summer workouts.

“I worked on a lot of things in the passing game and reading defenses (during the spring),” Taylor said. “It’s starting to come along really well.”

Roberts also showed off his playmaking ability on the field, catching four balls for 65 yards and one touchdown.

He also returned a kickoff for 41 yards.

“He’s always had ability. … I think, now, he’s turning that into a threat,” Beamer said. “He understands the position, and when you put the ball in his hands, you have a chance to make a big play.”

“We were looking forward to coming out here and showing our type of offense,” Roberts said. “Coming into the spring, we knew we could play a lot faster. …

“We knew we had the experience under our belt. We weren’t scared to go out there and let it all loose because during the season we were trying to hold things back because we didn’t want to

make mistakes. Now, we know that even if you make mistakes, you do it full speed, and you can correct it.”

And now comes the time when the lingering feeling sets in, and we are little more than a couple warm months away from a first game that will show us just how special this Hokie team could be.

“When I first came here, they talked about improving your schedule,” Beamer said. “We are talking about opening up with Alabama, then Nebraska, and we have Miami in there in the first four ball games. We certainly upgraded our schedule. It is tough, but it’s good. We’ve got players in this program who want to play good people.”

And as their summer dreams are filled with broken tackles, jukes and flashes of lightning from No. 34, Hokie fanatics are hoping that perhaps that first touchdown reception was a glimpse into what the near future holds.

“My mom really has not seen me play since my junior year of high school, and I always find her before the game and make sure that every time that I score I point to her,” Williams said. “Just seeing her jumping and getting all excited, it made me feel like I’m back to being me on the football field. (After the 56-yard touchdown reception), I pointed right to her. … She pointed to me and blew me a kiss, and I blew her a kiss back.”

Here’s to hoping Ms. Williams blows a lot more kisses come fall.

BRIAN CLAY/SPPS

Running back Ryan Williams delivers a stiff arm to cornerback Cris Hill.

Harris lands with Eagles in fifth round BRIAN WRIGHT

ct sports editor As the lone Virginia Tech player chosen in the 2009 NFL Draft, cornerback Victor ‘Macho’ Harris was selected by the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday with the 157th overall pick – the 21st of the fifth round.

“I've been waiting,” Harris said. “It's been a long ride and to be drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles, I'm close to home.

The Philadelphia Eagles are going to have a great player.”

They may have a player that can be inserted at both cornerback and safety, which was one reason why head coach Andy Reid and other higher management personnel were drawn to Harris.

“I just took him because you can put him at safety or corner, and he makes plays,” Eagles head coach Andy Reid

said in Sunday’s press conference. “He plays so smart, so instinctive, and with so much energy. He is kind of fun to watch.”

A three-year starter with the Hokies, Harris was expected by most draft analysts to be claimed in the third or fourth round.

However, it was five hours into the event’s second day before the Highland Springs native found his spot playing professional football.

Many consider a slow 4.68 40-yard dash time at the NFL combine and questions regarding his footwork as reasons for the 5-foot-11, 187-pound Harris slipping down the draft board.

“He didn’t run that fast at the combine, but he did run faster at his workout,” Eagles general manager Tom Heckert said. “On tape, he plays fast.”

Harris made the all-ACC first team on

two occasions. Last year, he was named a second-team All-American.

Following the 2007 season, he was projected to be a first or second round one year ago. However, Harris opted to stay in school for his senior season — leading Tech to its second consecutive ACC championship and a victory in the Orange Bowl.

He played the boundary cornerback position where he made a team-high six interceptions, was used as the main kick and punt returner, and also lined up at wide receiver to aid an inexperienced pass offense.

Harris’ selection marks the sixth straight year that a Tech defensive back is drafted. In 2008, Brandon Flowers was drafted in the second round by the Kansas City Chiefs.

There has been talk from draft pundits that Harris is suited more for the

safety spot. That likelihood may have increased now that he’s with the Eagles, considering their recent loss of all-pro Brian Dawkins to Denver.

Harris could still provide help at cornerback. On Sunday, the team added Ellis Hobbs in a trade with New England. Hobbs may be a replacement for the disgruntled Sheldon Brown, who has asked for a trade due to a contract dispute.

“They have great players in the secondary that hold up throughout the years,” Harris said. “All I can do is come in and continue the tradition of a great secondary and continue the (tradition) of great defensive players that the Eagles have had.”

Harris becomes the first Hokie selected by the Eagles since 1992, when guard William Boatwright was picked in the seventh round.

THEBOOZENEWS

tuesday, april 28, 2009

Spin the bottle IT’S THAT TIME OF YEAR AGAIN. QUADFEST, AN ANNUAL MASSIVE PARTY IN RADFORD, CLUTCHES ALL CORNERS OF THE CITY. stories by topher forhecz

DANIEL LIN/SPPS

A

fter driving down Tyler Avenue on a Saturday night toward Radford for a while, I was beginning to get skeptical. The road from the highway had offered little more than dark expanses of wood and scattered gas stations a couple hun-

dred feet away from one another. More importantly, they were closed by the time I was in search of something to drink at around 11 p.m. Everywhere I looked, there was no sign of festivities, no inclination of a city-wide party. Guided by my thirst, I stopped in a Food Lion further down the road. What greeted my eyes inside was a reaffirmation that I was on the right path. A large green sign stood in between the opposing automatic doors at the entrance and read “Kegs. Register 7” in big black lettering. Walking back to the car, iced coffee in hand, I spotted some Food Lion employees rolling out a cart with a keg resting on top of it, about to transfer this sizable amount of alcohol into the hands of eager youths awaiting in a white mini-van. I was close. As I continued on my course, the flat road peaked upward as I approached a hill. Like looking over the mountain ridge and first setting eyes on Canaan, Radford and Quadfest appeared in a flurry of lights and bodies as I made my descent past the crest of the hill. On the right was Radford University, its campus surprisingly calm and noticeably barren of activity, only traversed by those uninterested or who had already invested too heavily in the merriment.

see QUADFEST, page three

page B2 2

tuesday, april 28, 2009

DANIEL LIN/SPPS

The Lantern’s Dave Caldwell, above, watches over the crowd to the side of the stage. Below, Nathan Hopkins surveys the Lantern’s floor for any violators of bar policy.

Night of the bouncer: Beer spills, crossed arms and permanent markers T he band, Chronicles of the Land Squid, is crescendoing on the Saturday night before Easter in Blacksburg. A sea of strong yellow and purple lights washes over the fans gathered at the Lantern as they raise their hands heavenwards in excitement. To the left of the stage, a patron is yo-yoing, the silver discs weaving in and out of the snares constructed by its own string, but to the right of the stage stands Dave Caldwell, his arms are crossed, face cold and expressionless.

He almost looks bored or uncomfortable.

Caldwell is one of the bouncers on duty that night at the Lantern. His official job title is “security,” and he and four or five other members of security are working their various posts tonight either upstairs, somewhere behind the bar, or on the floor.

Watching him slowly prowl through the crowd looking for any infractions, it’s hard to imagine that this is the same easygoing and jovial person I had spoken to earlier in the night.

Tonight is his ninth night on the job.

“I’m not that green,” he excitedly said earlier in the night, “but I’m pretty green. I love it. I don’t mind the job at all. It’s not a bad job. I’m a night person. I’m up usually anyways, and it seems like I do some good down here.”

It is a job he has come to enjoy from the little extra perk of seeing live music night after night to the type of generally laid back patronage that frequents the bar. He feels this is a circumstance unfamiliar to many other local bars.

“I know a bouncer,” Caldwell said, “at Sharkey’s and a guy at the Gobbler, and they all hate their jobs, and it’s like, ‘Why?’ It’s just straight bars are different than this. We have shows and more people come here for shows than just to get drunk.”

Caldwell is clad in jeans and a black Los Lobos T-shirt with a white font spelling out the band’s name. It is part of the Lantern’s security uniform, or lack thereof. This attire, however, offers the bouncers a certain advantage when dealing with a customer that might require some assistance from the premises.

“We sneak up on a motherfucker,” said Roy McCoy, a fellow bouncer. “Before you know it, you got a grip of hands on you, and you’re going toward the door.”

McCoy and James Wiley are the first two bouncers I meet when I arrive at the Lantern at around 9 p.m. There is no one outside but the two of them, sitting at the entrance of the Lantern, and only a table with a box of cash, wristbands and a piece of paper to monitor how many overs and unders are in the club at any one time separates them. They pass the time chainsmoking and finding whatever it is they can to talk about before the rush comes.

McCoy is wearing a green hoodie with a charcoal Dickie’s jacket over it. A former army man, his hair is slicked back, and a few tattoos are revealed sometimes when he moves. I think that I spot a cloud with a cross in it on one of his hands that might be part of a larger tattoo; on his neck is the face of Christ.

People trickle in slowly; it’s almost 10 p.m., and Chronicles won’t be on till near midnight. After watching for a while, I begin to get the sense that the bouncers see a lot of the same faces coming through their doors. They talk casually with a few while still keeping a slightly disinterested demeanor.

“We’re probably the most well known bouncers around this town,” Wiley said, “because we’re cool with everybody. ... We’re not dicks, like if you go to any other bar, like the people at Big Al’s throw you down the steps. They don’t give a fuck about you. Every bouncer in this bar is friends with pretty much every person in this town.”

A tiny, blonde regular approaches the two and starts up a conversation. She decides to leave when she realizes that her friends have not come yet tonight.

When she returns, they briefly chat back and forth again; for a moment she sits on Wiley’s lap. Inevitably, she pays and gets her hands X’d, an indicator that she is under 21, before going downstairs into the club.

“Make it pretty,” she instructs McCoy. After she leaves, Wiley looks at me.

“It sucks,” he said, “not being able to hit on the women on the job too. Like if Big Mama (the bar manager) had seen her sitting on my lap, I would have been in trouble. It’s not professional.”

As a whole, the obligations of the bouncers as employees are as follows: They watch the table upstairs, check IDs, give out wristbands, keep track of the number of people in the club, and do many bar backing details such as restocking beers and getting rid of empty beer bottles.

McCoy also informs me that they do a lot of the short order cooking. When I ask him if it’s helped his personal ability to cook, he laughs.

“I’ve cooked at damn near every joint in town, dude,” he said. I take that as a no.

The final task of the bouncers, and probably the most frustrating for someone who works there, is cleaning up everyone else’s fun at the end of the night. This includes throwing away all the

trash and mopping. Occasionally, acts playing at the venue will make this more of a challenging task.

“One night the Boogieburg gang, they came down here. They had a toilet paper gun, the thing shot an air current that had a roll of toilet paper that just unrolled as it shot so that all over our beer soaked floor was pretty good stuff,” McCoy said.

I see someone get ejected around 12:45 a.m.

A shaggy black haired young man has had too much to drink and is beginning to have trouble staying awake at the bar. His removal is quick.

A pat on the shoulder and a quick exchange of words, and he and Caldwell are walking toward the door.

“I had to shake him,” Caldwell said. “He was out.”

When they arrive upstairs at the table, Wiley cuts off the youth’s pink wristband, and he goes off on his way into the night. Caldwell and Wiley compare their numbers for the night; so far everyone has only one under their belt.

Ejecting someone from the venue is a regular occurrence, happening almost on a daily basis, according to Wiley.

This is mostly attributed to the many minors, mostly college students, who attempt to break the rules of the bar. The bouncers are constantly forced to watch the dance floor from various positions, mostly on the elevated platforms to the left and right of the stage where the full expanse of the club can be realized, for underage drinkers or anyone getting too rowdy.

“We still get the most kills,” McCoy said, “I bet out of any bar. We throw out more people than anybody just because of that shit. It’s always the underage kids. Catch a kid in the middle of a dance floor just pounding a Joose with big old X’s.”

When a person is ejected, it is normally in a peaceful manner.

Wiley, who is wearing a blue Boogieburg shirt and jeans said, “They know they’re caught and get out. Every once in a while there’s a bout.”

“The girls are the worst,” quickly added McCoy. “The girls are the ones who will just not go. You have to carry more girls out.”

Both have worked here for about eight months.

Wiley, whose past jobs have included working at Owens and the Farmhouse in Christiansburg, has developed a technique for dealing with those who put up a lot of resistance.

“The fireman carry is the best,” he said. “Say you got a girl who won’t get out, you just throw her over your shoulder.”

The most common problems that the bouncers have to deal with are underage kids trying to pass as over 21 years old; this includes kids attempting to use fake IDs. After working on the job for so long, Wiley has started his own wall of shame for the number of IDs he has personally started confiscating.

Currently, he has nine and at times the kids make it easy for him to consider the possibility of future additions. Normally he sees people just using other friend’s IDs, where descriptions such as height and eye color can lead to their demise.

“I had one girl that was 6’1,” said Wiley. “Her ID said like five foot.”

Minors have recently gotten creative with the ways in which they attempt to slip into the legal drinking realm. The club tries to combat this by checking IDs (normally with a variation on greetings such as “’Sup, hoss? ID?” or “Can I see your ID, bud?”) and handing out wristbands to those who can legally drink.

These wristbands change every day in order to make it even more difficult for anyone to get past the bouncers unnoticed. For the unders, their hands are stained by a permanent marker that leaves two, large, damning X’s.

“A lot of people wash them off,” Wiley said.

“Some people put Vaseline on their hands so right when you put your X’s on, you can do this (rubs top of hand against palm) and it comes right off.”

At two o’clock, the lights flick on, the music stops, and people begin to mill toward the door.

What is left is what is keeping the bouncers from getting back home: a sticky floor, half empty beer bottles, and ashtrays loaded with butts. These types of preoccupations can sometimes force the men to remain until 3:30 a.m. or later. Right before McCoy jokingly tells me I need to go or hide in a corner somewhere, I ask Caldwell how his ninth night went. The stern looking man standing next to the stage before has reverted to his old self. An unprovoked smile rests on his face.

“Great,” he said. “Loved it. I’m still trying to get beer off the floor.”

page pageB33

tuesday, april 28, 2009

Virginia Alcohol Safety Action Program: Virginia’s ‘best kept secret’ T here are a lot of terms that are thrown around when people talk about life at Virginia Tech. A litany of vocabulary exists that only a true native could appreciate. Terms such as “Owens,” “GLC” and “VASAP” are commonly flipped about between students. The last phrase, however; is truly understood by few.

“It’s like the best kept secret in Virginia,” said Susan Marshon, executive director of the New River Valley VASAP located in Christiansburg.

“How does VASAP work?”

VASAP stands for the Virginia Alcohol Safety Action Program, and Marshon and her staff comprise one of 24 local ASAPs around Virginia.

The program originated in 1976 after the Virginia General Assembly passed legislation expanding a selfsustaining pilot program statewide that was started in 1972. The pilot program was conceived as a means to combat a rising issue with drinking and driving as well as related DUI offenses.

“Virginia got a federal grant,” Marshon said, “to do a pilot project to try to figure out what might work to handle the DUI offenders, so it was primarily started to deal with just DUI offenders, but it became a really interesting model because it didn’t cost anything.”

With 7,000 offenders coming through the VASAP doors every year, fees paid by offenders is what keep the program afloat.

“VASAP is a user-funded program,” Marshon said. “We get no money from the state or the federal government, and it’s important because we’re the only agency probably in the country that functions that way.”

Today, the Christiansburg VASAP has grown to treat more than just DUI offenders in the fourth planning district that it covers (Floyd, Montgomery, Pulaski, Giles and the City of Radford). It also takes drug offenders and DUID charges, reckless driving offenders, intoxicated in public offenders and liquor law offenders who violate laws such as underage possession of alcohol or buying alcohol for a minor. Depending on the charge, offenders can expect to receive one of the following penalties and are susceptible to more than just one depending on the nature and regulations of the convicted crime: attend mandatory educational classes, submit to random drug/alcohol screenings (normally at the start of classes), enroll in community service, and possibly have their driver’s license revoked or suspended. In some of the more serious charges, such as repeated DUI charges, an ignition interlock is placed inside of the offender’s vehicle,

which forces the driver to blow into the ignition interlock device every 20 minutes — proving his breath is alcohol-free — while driving or risk having his car shut down. He is also expected to pay fines, which in part pays for a case manager to oversee an individual’s completion of the VASAP programs.

“Unlike what you might expect,” Marshon said, “they’re also placed on probation, and what they’re paying for is their probation supervision.

Because the common question I get is, ‘You mean I have to pay for my community service?’ No, you’re not paying to do your community service. You’re paying for your probation supervision, so depending on the number of hours that you get that determines the length of time that you’ll be on probation and how much it will cost.”

What has caused the program to change and expand in the past 30 years into the multi-faceted organization that it is now is because largely in part of a local board, which tries to address the changing needs of the various counties and communities.

The board works with local legislators in order to fine tune any small details that may be individual to the area that the overarching ASAP plan may not cover.

“The local boards are able to establish programs to meet the needs of their local courts,” Marshon said. “So we have a great big young offender program here, and the program up in Harrisonburg has a really big young offender program because they’ve got various colleges and universities.

You might go down to Southwest Virginia; they have no young offender program because they don’t have the population.”

The young offender program is probably the most notoriously known VASAP program to Tech students, and with good reason, as about 900 people go through it each year. This figure includes students from Blacksburg and Radford. In this program, offenders under the age of 25 are given the option of attending a mandatory eight-week educational program on top of about $200 worth of fees in exchange for having the charge reduced or dismissed.

Marshon said that charges such as underage possession of alcohol and using a fake ID are the two primary reasons for people coming to the young offender program.

A Tech sophomore who wished to remain anonymous had to go through this program after he was caught .06 BAC deep into some whiskey in a friend’s car on the way to University of Virginia last September. The car the 19-year-old was in, which featured a sober driver, had been pulled over for

improper use of its high beams while driving down interstate 81 at night.

After facing charges in Botetourt county, the local judge assigned him 50 hours of community service, suspended his license for six months, and required that he complete the young offender VASAP program.

Once he was properly registered for the course after court in October, the next eight weeks would find the student carpooling with others down to 175 Independence Blvd., site of the Christiansburg VASAP. Past the Christiansburg high school, the building is a two-story modest, brown brick structure whose backdrop features a large construction yard. The waiting room for the place has the sterile feeling of a doctor’s office; there are comfy blue chairs and magazines lying around, but the fact that one has to be buzzed in to go past the main room and can only talk to the receptionist behind a teller’s plate of glass reminds any individual of what the score here really is.

He would arrive at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday nights to a classroom on the lower level of the NRV VASAP building where an ex-police officer who was his instructor would be waiting for him.

“He’d have us blow into a sensor,” the sophomore said, “and figure out if any of us were boozing up before the meeting.”

The material taught in the class is based on criteria used by the rest of the state.

“We have standard curriculum throughout the state,” Marshon said, “and each instructor is trained in how to use those curriculum. There’s a standard curriculum that every ASAP uses, so if you go to an education program here, you’ll go to the same education program in Fairfax. The state has a standard set of curriculum for every intervention program that we offer.”

To the student, the class seemed mostly composed of videos and discussion. Some of the discussion covered alcohol laws, what behaviors police officers look for, what rights a person has versus what the police have the right to do, and brainstorming sessions on increasing safety or awareness.

“One of the activities was along the lines of what could students do to decrease the number of alcoholrelated deaths or something like that, and we’re supposed to come up with ideas like student-run alcohol classes or students DDing or making sure your friends don’t drink entire handles in an hour.”

“There were some heavy videos,” he later added. “There was one video about a guy who had 700 drunk in

public arrests over the course of 15, 20 years, and after like three years of picking this dude up one of the jailers at this California beach jail started filming him.”

He claims that he is not a heavy drinker, that he drinks only once a week at maximum, and that his circumstance was the product of bad luck. Because of this, the program did not have much of an effect on the chemical engineering major, and he does not plan to change his drinking behavior while presently in college.

“I don’t think anyone really came away with it with any sort of revelation,” he said. “It wasn’t a life-changing experience. He didn’t go about the course in a way that it was supposed to correct our behavior. It was kind of like, how to keep us from getting in trouble again.”

He is not too worried about the underage possession of alcohol that currently stains his record either.

“Career wise,” he said, “I’m sure that I’ll be doing entry-level shit for a while anyway, so by the time it’s important, it’ll be irrelevant.”

While the 19-year-old may be unphased by his experiences, other members of the Blacksburg community feel that many college students do not think far enough into the future before taking risks such as excessive drinking, drinking underage or getting behind the wheel intoxicated.

“You still got that three-year period where you are and you’re not (an adult),” said General District Court Judge Gino Williams, while sitting in an office in the Blacksburg Municipal building. He is leaning back in a plush leather chair, in a stark white button down shirt with neatly combed hair, his arms folded behind his head. “And the consequences of a conviction for alcohol possession, if you go into a job with the federal government that requires a security clearance, it could affect it. You don’t think about those things when you’re 18 and starting out or 19 as a sophomore. You don’t think about the ramifications of a conviction or the ramifications of having it on you’re record so it’s, ‘Who knows?’

That’s way down the road. That’s something far off.”

Williams has been witness to the hundreds of youths who have gone through his court each year and ended up in the New River Valley VASAP. After seeing so many faces and convictions, he has noticed a common denominator in most of the offenses.

“As you get older,” he said, “you sort of look back and you think of all the things that occur: the assaults, almost all of the criminal offenses and stuff, that occur in this court in this particular jurisdiction in Blacksburg

Alcohol related arrests in 2008 VTPD: 368 140 liquor law violations 192 intoxicated in the public 46 DUIs on campus

Blacksburg PD: 823 Stats consist of DUI, Intoxicated in public, and liquor law violations (which includes underage possession, purchasing alcohol for a minor, possession of a fake ID)

Radford PD: 663 citations for alcohol violations Christiansburg 141 DUIs 227 DIPs 43 other alcohol-related charges to include underage possession

SARA SPANGLER/COLLEGIATE TIMES

have an alcohol component. The assaults, the destructions of property, almost everything I see has alcohol involved in it; it’s not just the being underage part. Alcohol is the driving force probably behind 85 percent or 90 percent of the crimes that occur in this courtroom.”

Naturally, there are dissenting opinions on the efficiency of VASAP or what it accomplishes between those who oversee the program and those who have been through it. The Tech sophomore perceives VASAP as effective in the sense that it does damages to a college-sized wallet and makes one go to classes that they never want to come back to.

“I think as a punitive measure it was pretty effective,” the student said. “No one wants to go to eight classes. They also charge you money.”

On the other side of the spectrum, Marshon looks at the number of repeat offenders to weigh the success of a program she has dedicated so much of her time to.

“We look at the numbers of people coming back,” she said, “which are very few. We have about a 12 percent recidivism rate, which is really low.”

Those who do end up making repeat appearances are the worst part of the job for Williams.

“What bothers me the most,” he said, “is seeing them come back the second time when they’ve had an opportunity, and you know that they’ve probably got a problem. I see so many students come through the first time with an offense; it’s when they start coming back, and I start seeing them, that there’s still a disconnect, and they’re still continuing to particularly drink, and they’re drinking a lot.”

But, fear not, VASAP has a program for that.

“What we try to do through our program,” Williams said, “is to get them into direct counseling rather than the group counseling if we think there is a problem. It’s a step up; it’s a more intensive program.”

Quadfest: Legions descend on Radford for annual drunken rapture from page one

T

he school formerly hosted the event on campus, but in recent years has abandoned the tradition.

“It started as a function on Radford University’s campus,” said Deputy Chief Angie Frye of the Radford Police at around 1 a.m. Sunday morning. “If I’m correct. It actually was an activity that it had, and the university stopped their involvement in that, and it’s just kind of continued as what you see, and it’s always remained Quadfest. As a matter of fact, when I started here years ago, it was called ‘the beginning of the world party,’ which was at the beginning of school, and the ‘end of the world party,’ which was a whole different clientele and different place it took place at.”

When I find Frye, she is at the Radford Police’s Incident Command Post in a parking lot behind the First Christian Church, in between Fairfax and Clement Street on the 1000 block.

She has been at the post since noon on Saturday. The station’s set up is a large white Sprinter trailer. Chairs and a table with snacks, food and Gatorade sit in front of it. Police cars and yellow barriers outline the perimeter. The purpose of the station is to provide local law enforcement with a convenient place to rest from patrolling as well as give the officers the advantage of a quicker response to a nearby emergency call.

EMS is also standing by there.

Tonight, when officers are on patrol, most of the summons or arrests done will be alcohol related in some manner.

“We’re probably going to see a lot more of open containers,” Frye said, “or drinking in public and underage possession. Probably the open containers will probably be our biggest summons issued, probably your most arrests, but I don’t even know at this point. I’m just guessing that you’re going to have a lot of drunk in publics and disorderly conducts.”

In the three hours that I stroll through Quadfest, I spot at least five different incidents where police appear and make arrests or issue summons.

The first one I witness takes place on the lawn of the Wesley Foundation at Radford. An officer is never alone; they travel in groups or have back up, which arrives shortly after they have stopped someone. Radford freshman Jo Nel, who explains to me that he has only had a “good handful” to drink tonight and that this is his first Quadfest, has also been witness to the increased police activity.

“Almost every other corner that I’ve

DANIEL LIN/SPPS

Partygoers assemble at a local 7-Eleven. The convenience store had to regulate the number of people who entered by forming a line outside. been to,” said Nel, “I’ve seen like bike cops just writing somebody a ticket.”

Yet, to really earn the attention of the police on a night like tonight when there are so many people to monitor, Nel feels, someone must really be asking for it.

“Everywhere I go, I hear complaints like, ‘Damn, I got a ticket,’ and I’m like, ‘What were you doing?’ People are just dumb sometimes. If you’re not 21 and you’re carrying a cup, it’s stupid.”

I meet him standing on the sidewalk outside of a large party, looking for a phone to use to get in contact with his friends whom he has lost track of.

Although Quadfest began on Thursday, he and most Radford students only began celebrating on Friday.

“Some people went out (on Thursday),” he said, “but from what I heard, it wasn’t too exciting.”

Dressed in a green polo and beige shorts, he explains to me that there are two sides to Radford, “light side” and

“dark side,” and that currently we are on the light side.

“Dark side is a bunch of houses,” said Nel, “and apartments. ... All of the frats are on this side.”

On the light side, the Incident Command Post is a new addition to Radford PD’s coverage of Quadfest; state police also come down to patrol the area. But other than these adjustments, little else has changed in how the police prepare for the event.

“We have more personnel out,” Frye said, “working to keep the crowds under control.”

And there are crowds: Hundreds of people are constantly in a state of motion. Just across the street from the Tyler Avenue side of a campus is a 7-11 with well more than 100 people standing in its parking lot. Only a few cars have managed to slip inside of the parking lot and have been left idling with music blasting. Bouncers wait at the front door of the 7-11, regulating

a line to let only a certain number of people inside at once. Some fireworks go off near the dumpster, but this is not uncommon on Quadfest weekend.

The sound of these explosives can be heard rattling throughout the city randomly all night.

According to Frye, it is difficult for police to really catch anyone who is setting off fireworks unless the police are already present.

“It kind of happens,” she said, “and it’s hard to figure out unless you’ve got somebody in the bushes.”

Walking down Downey Street, some of the houses are overflowing with students and partygoers; people stand on the porch and the sidewalk, blue and red cups in hand. Other houses look practically abandoned with the only record of human activity there being the collage of waste left on the front porch and lawn. One particular house’s seemingly only occupant is a life-sized plastic ram standing on the roof wear-

ing a Radford shirt.

Fire Chief Lee Simpkins has been a member of the City of Radford Fire and Rescue for 39 years. One of his primary concerns is that Quadfest participants put themselves potentially at risk when packing into various houses and establishments.

“There are so many people in these houses,” he explained, “that we’re always afraid that somebody will drop a cigarette or something and set one of them on fire, and we’d end up with several fatalities because of so many people in them. That’s my biggest worry about it.”

Like the Radford Police Department, the City of Radford Fire and Rescue has also increased its staff size for the weekend in the event of any unforeseen emergencies. Though they do not officially recognize Quadfest, the extra staff is a necessary precautionary method.

Luckily, Radford Fire and Rescue do not receive many emergency calls on

Quadfest weekend and normally end up regulating activities such as shutting down impromptu bonfires or controlling dumpster fires in the city.

“We may have a couple dumpster fires,” Simpkins said, “or something like that; they really don’t give the fire department a lot of problems.”

Despite the fact that the crowds do not offer immediate problems, their presence presents a challenge to Fire and Rescue attempting to reach any emergency in the city.

“Even in the area that they sort of have it all in,” Simpkins said, “if we were to have something in that area, we’ve got so many people in the streets and parking is such a problem that all of that would hinder the fire department if we do have something.”

Both Frye and Simpkins have seen the beast that is Quadfest change over the years. To Simpkins, the level of intensity that comes with the event is something that has only recently developed.

“I’d say the last five,” he said about Quadfest’s growth. “I don’t think it was a big deal up until the last few years.”

Frye has also seen many Quadfests come and go, each one its own kind of unique occasion.

“It just depends on the different type of students,” she said, “and the crowd that we have. Last year wasn’t anywhere in comparison to this year. Weather plays a factor in it. Last year, it was raining and chillier.”

Tonight is a night of noise in all respects to the senses. The eyes and ears cannot help but experience the showcasing of a city repelling itself and letting go. There are opposing forces at work in Radford during Quadfest.

There are those like Nel, who have only recently embraced the Bacchus-like tradition, and Frye, who attempts to keep some type of order in the streets when everyone else seems to speak a different language.

As I go to walk back to my car, the intersection between Third Street and Downey Street is shut down. A K-9 unit is sitting in the middle of the street with its lights on; several police officers are all over the scene.

Some are chatting with each another, another is talking to a witness, and a few stand by a car parked on the side of the road with a citizen. It’s time to go; this is past the realm of drunken merry mishaps. This is the part where impending consequences will alter lives forever. Right before I close the door to my car to make my way back toward Blacksburg, the dogs begin to bark.

page B4

tuesday, april 28, 2009

Blacksburg Brewing Company makes return after Berlin education J

ohn Bryce is sitting next to me downtown at Soulvaki. A golden pilsner fresh off the tap is sitting in front of him. The logo on the glass reads “BLACKSBURGER Pils,” in familiar Tech colors. He talks casually, a 2001 graduate who could never pack up and leave Blacksburg. He drinks the beer like it could be a pint of Kool-Aid, but what is bubbling down his throat is a culmination of years of blood, sweat and an admiration for beer that could never be bought. More importantly, it is his beer. As the owner of the Blacksburg Brewing Company, he is consuming his flagship beer. The beer is the result of a strange path Q&A that found Bryce shutting down the BBC in its first incarnation in 2004 and later on selling the brewing equipment so that he could finance a German education that would garner him the title of Brewmaster VLB from a famed school in Berlin. Upon his return, fate found him working for the Roanoke Roadhouse Brewing Company, which had bought his brewing equipment.

This was the genesis of the second incarnation of the Blacksburg Brewing Company. While sitting in the restauraunt Bryce took the time to talk to the CT about his experiences:

CT: When was the first time you considered going into the brewing BRYCE industry?

JB: I guess it kind of happened on accident. When I graduated from Tech, I decided that I wanted to stay here, I didn’t want to leave, and I studied finance.

And I could have gotten a good job in finance, but I was like, “I want to stay in Blacksburg for a while,” and I didn’t know what I was going to do. It was really hard to find a decent job. I

ended up getting a job at a restaurant that they were building. It wasn’t going to open up till the end of the summer, and so I had the whole summer to kill, and I went back home to Richmond and I was like, “Well I need to find a job for the summer until this other job starts, and I’ll stay in Blacksburg.” And I had worked as a server at Rich Ralph during one of my summers off college so I had been around in a brew pub, but I didn’t have anything to do with making beer, but it’s intriguing so I was like, “OK, I have to get this job for the summer. Maybe I ought to try to work in a brewery; that seems like that’d be a really cool thing to do.” So I called up every brewery I knew of or could find out about in Richmond, and of course no one was hiring — most breweries are a one- or two-man operation — but I did find two of them where two of the brewers were like, “We can’t pay you or hire you, but if you want to come hang out we’ll teach you some stuff, and you can kind of do the apprentice thing and work for free and learn,” and I was like “OK.” So I did that and I basically just stayed until they got tired of me asking questions or whatever, and then I came back here and started working in the restaurant, and I just got hooked on the idea of working in a brewery, and I was just like, “This is what I want to do.” And so that was when I decided that that’s what I was going to do was work in a brewery, and at that point I had to figure out how.

CT: So that’s how you got your feet wet was working in the brewery?

JB: Yeah, I came back from the limited commercial experience I had there just kind of helping out, and naturally I was like, “I don’t have a job in a brewery now.” So I started home brewing and home brewing at a ridiculous rate. I turned basically our whole kitchen into a brewery. I spent about a year brewing intensely at home while working in a restaurant, and I was always kind of an entrepreneur so I was like, “Why don’t

we have a brewery in Blacksburg?” If you look at it, all the other Virginia college towns like Charlottesville, Williamsburg, even Harrisonburg has a brewpub. And I was like, “How do we not have something?” That’s when the wheels started turning, and I started putting together a business plan and all that. I spent basically a year working in a restaurant, home brewing and formulating this business plan to open a brewery.

CT: Studying finance seemed to pay off.

JB: It’s definitely one of those things that I couldn’t have done without. I have a lot of regrets in that I didn’t study; I don’t have the biochemistry background that I wish I had gotten in college. That would have made such a big difference to me experience-wise in brewing. But you know, I could never have gotten it off the ground without the finance stuff.

CT: How confident did you feel originally opening the BBC? JB: I’m so much more risk adverse now then I was then. I was 23 at the time, and I was like, I didn’t care. I was like, “I’m just going to do this.” It didn’t matter to me. I wasn’t concerned about it. It was just like, “I’m going to do this, and if it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out.” I figured worse case scenario, I end up with about the amount of debt that a lot of my friends have in student loans, and I got a killer experience, and I could probably pretty easily get a job after that. It’s kind of like one of those, “You don’t have anything, you don’t have anything to lose” kind of situations where it’s just like, “Just do it.”

CT: It’s really like the perfect timing in life, too.

JB: It really was. It’s crazy. At the same time, I didn’t have a lot of money, but I had a lot of time and a lot of energy because I was so young. When I didn’t have money I was always able to throw

time and sweat at it.

CT: Kind of balance it out?

JB: It wasn’t even a balance. Even at

23, you can only work so many 17hour days before you’re ready to drop. I aged probably 10 years in the two years that the brewery was open at least.

CT: How was it trying to start the brewing company from the ground up?

JB: I don’t even really remember. It was so long ago, and it’s almost laughable now to think of what I did. It was so unsophisticated, but it was great at the same time. I really regret that we don’t have a lot more pictures and stories documented because it was crazy.

CT: So what happened to the first incarnation of the BBC? JB: Well kind of what I said. I burned out. I was making no money; I was paying myself only what I had to pay rent and whatever I had to. We didn’t have the volume; we weren’t selling enough beer to make it. Part of it is, I was so busy in the brewery trying to figure out how to make stuff work and learning as I was going, teaching myself on the job rather than really knowing what I was doing. I didn’t have the time and energy that I should have dedicated to promoting the product. There was zero promotion of that entire business, it was all: We have a tap handle in a bar and that’s it. I didn’t spend any money on any kind of marketing. It was all grass roots, whatever happens, happens. There was just no time or money to do anything but make beer.

CT: When the BBC, the first incarnation closed down, did you go to Germany right after that?

JB: That was more recent. I basically said, “Hey, I don’t want to dig this hole any deeper, and if I do, its going to be bad.” I can get out of where I am right now, but if I dig it deeper, it’s going to take a lifetime to recover from. It was a

lot of debt; it was no joke. I recognized that, hey, I could probably use some more experience, and I could definitely use a steady paycheck. I’m not giving up, but I’m going to regroup. I’m going to try this again with more money and more experience at a later date. That was my attitude so I went and got a job working at the Capitol City Brewing Company in Arlington, and I ended up getting promoted to head brewer there while I was there. That was a great experience because it affirmed for me that, “OK, maybe I actually did learn a lot from myself, like teaching myself. I wasn’t doing everything wrong.” So that was a good experience.

I left there and I went to Old Dominion where I worked for … I guess I was at Dominion for not much more than a year. That was an incredible experience; it’s a very big brewery. It can fit my entire annual production from the first brewery in two of their tanks, and we were filtering at least double that much beer every week. You can learn a lot in a big place like that.

CT: When did you go to Germany?

JB: A year ago.

CT: That wasn’t even that long ago.

What prompted you to go to Germany and how were your experiences there?

JB: Well, I guess I said, “I know that this is my career; this is what I’m always going to do, and I kind of felt like, “You know, if this is what I’m going to always do I want to have the credentials.” I’d always wanted to go to Germany to study, and I’d always wanted to be a real brew master. A lot of people call themselves a brew master and in the United States, it’s not regulated. You can say, “Oh, sweet, I made some IPA in my bathtub, I’m a brew master.” So it’s like, “OK, congratulations.” I’d always wanted to do that. I basically got to the point where I said, “OK, if I don’t do this now, I’m not going to do it because I’m getting older, and it’s not going to be any easier for me to just pick up and

go to Germany for awhile.”

CT: How did it change the way you approached brewing beer?

JB: It was great experience because it’s a whole different level. My fellow classmates were from some of the largest brewers in the world.

We had InBev that just bought Anheuser-Busch. A lot of my classmates were pretty high up at InBev. ... Big, big breweries, so the level of sophistication and all the different experiences and backgrounds from people. You had people that were only responsible for energy in the brewery, you had people who were barley breeders for some really big brewers, and then you had people who were chemical engineers and product specialists. I learned just as much from the people as I did from the curriculum itself. The curriculum was cool too because it was very hands on, it was very practical; we did a lot of practical lab work. It was like, “OK, it’s one thing to understand the water chemistry or whatever, but we’re going to actually do the experiments in the lab so that when you go home you can do the experiments in your lab.”

You don’t get that at a lot of schools.

That’s one of the things that VLB (Versuchs-undLehranstaltfurBrauerei) is really known for; they have a lot of practical work. It took it to another level of sophistication. Basically, I have a better knowledge base of the science and technology of brewing now than I did before.

CT: How did you feel on the first day that the BBC reopened, and how did you feel differently than the first time around?

JB: The first time was more exciting fanfare like, “We did it,” you know?

The second time was much more planned and methodical and more of a relief. More of a “OK, finally, we’re back.” I think my friends were more excited than I was.

Brewing Science and Technology class adds flavor to Tech courses S

ean O’Keefe likes beer; more importantly, he likes to brew beer. To this day, it is a tradition that he still regularly adheres to, mostly focusing on the production of brown and pale ales.

“My next door neighbor,” he said, “and the guy two over are both beer lovers, and one guy has a couple of soda kegs in his basement fridge so I help keep those stocked for that.

My interest in beer primarily came through home-brewing.”

Growing up in Nova Scotia, he came from a country known for its heavy taxation of alcohol. In college, he discovered the sensibility and intrigue that comes with the art of brewing.

“I was home-brewing in college,” O’Keefe said. “Not just as a way of getting cheap beer but just sort of as an introductory exercise or hobby. And in food science, when I was doing my master’s degree, several of my professors would make beer or would start making beer, and they showed me how to make beer. … So that was in the early 1980s, so I’ve been making beer for pushing 30 years now.”

Now a professor with the Food Science and Technology department, O’Keefe, has been able to share his passion for brewing with his students in the form of the Brewing Science and Technology class (FST 3124), which he teaches every fall semester.

O’Keefe began working on the class in 2004, when he noticed a growing interest around campus in home brewing.

“I’ve had a lot of students come to me,” he said, “knowing that I’m a home brewer, asking for help, and I’ve also had students in food science come to me and say, ‘How can I get into brewing as a career?’ So I realized there was a lot of interest in beer, so I developed the class six years ago primarily as a class to sort of span different areas in the university so you wouldn’t have to

have a specialist knowledge in food science to understand the class. That’s one of the things I really wanted to ensure, was to really allow a wide audience in terms of the backgrounds of the students who are interested in beer.”

Sitting in his office, number 119 in the red brick Food Sciences building, O’Keefe is wearing a blue “GAP” shirt, jeans, and tennis shoes. There are several pictures posted up throughout his space of family, friends, and mostly his twin daughters — about 30. He is drinking some freshly made Ulan tea, a tea he was turned on to when he began teaching scientific writing classes online in Taiwan once a month for the last two years. He has quite the access now teaching in a land that specializes in the tea.

The Brewing Science and Technology class was first taught in 2005 at Virginia Tech under a generic 4,000 level course number, but it did not become formally approved by the university until last year, giving it a 3,000 level code.

“It took me about four years to get the class formally approved,” he said. “This was the first class that I went through the normal approval process.”

One of the biggest issues that he cited in getting the class approved was finding an adequate textbook.

“I have 18 books there,” he said pointing to the many behind my head on the shelf with fun titles such as “Lipids in Food,” “Fats For the Future” and “Food Alert.” “And maybe three of them would be appropriate for a class like this. I have some that are $250 to $350; one of them there is used by the degree in Brewing Science in Berlin. $300 …

That’s not really an appropriate price for a student to pay for a book.”

The titles suggest a course with an intense scientific structure, and Brewing Science and Technology does cover some chemistry.

“I have a fair amount of chemistry in it,” said O’Keefe, “because to under-

stand brewing you need to understand chemistry. That’s a basic requirement of the class. That’s really the one thing.

I would call it a low intermediate class. If anybody’s had chemistry they should have no problems at all. Even high school chemistry. I’ve learned a lot of the stuff that we’re looking at by taking three years of chemistry in high school. If you’ve had an undergraduate chemistry class, you should have no problems with it.”

The course also tries to look at cultural and historical significance of brewing throughout history, beginning in 4 to 5 BC with the first suggestive evidence of grain brewing.

“There are a lot of aspects of brewing that I like to bring into class that maybe students haven’t thought of before, because its not just a thing to drink on Friday night if you’re out with your friends, or you drink while you watch the football game or something and relax,” said O’Keefe. “It’s really got a pretty good link with human culture with the past (8,000 to 10,000 years).”

The class begins with a lecture called “Alcohol Awareness,” a valuable lesson that O’Keefe felt was the proper and responsible way to start off a class centered on brewing alcohol.

“I have Steve Clarke who’s the director of the Alcohol Information Center on campus (and) who’s involved in a lot of programs to make students aware of some of the potential dangers of alcohol,” O’Keefe said.

O’Keefe addresses one of the many pitfalls of alcohol consumption, which is the jeopardy it can place in one’s academic career.

“If you get caught,” said O’Keefe, “the university, in terms of judicial affairs, can be quite strict in dealing with students: students who get DUIs, students who get drunk in public, underage drinking. They may be dismissed from the university on the basis of conduct because of these things. … It’s impor-

tant for students just to think that there may be serious repercussions, to just be careful.”

Another important topic of the class as well as one of its primary focuses is the many different styles of beer that are covered from porters to pilsners.

O’Keefe’s basis for the way he divides the styles is from the Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP), which divides beers into about 40 or so main styles. On the syllabus, I count about 15 styles covered in class. Each style comes with its own set of in-class tasting.

According to Kevin Holland, who has TAed for the class the last two years, this was his favorite part of the process.

“I enjoyed sampling all the different beers,” he said. “Over the semester, we probably sampled six a week. The students were probably able to sample 60 different beers around there. I mean that’s something that would be really expensive to do on your own to buy just one bottle of each. That would probably be a few hundred dollars, especially for some of the more expensive Belgian Ales. That would be $9, $10 a bottle.”

Holland met O’Keefe when he came to Virginia Tech as a graduate student after graduating with an undergraduate degree in biology from the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford. As another home brewer, acting as TA for the class seemed like a natural fit.

“Sean’s my adviser, and I like beer brewing, so we put two and two together, and I ended up TAing,” he said. This year his responsibilities expanded as he taught half the classes, which involved putting together the various lectures, a task he did not expect to be as difficult as it turned out to be.

“Teaching a lecture,” said Holland, “takes a lot more time when you have to make up the lecture. It’s a lot of work going in, and you try to anticipate questions so you have to try and know the

answers, too.”

From a student’s standpoint, the tasting and exploring of the different styles was one of the most advantageous lessons garnered from the class.

For graduate student Denise Gardner, it produced a greater appreciation for some of the more overlooked styles of beer.

“I felt more comfortable with styles,” she said. “I went out and purchased more beers to try, and then I did my own research on sour ales, which is something that I found really enjoyable or just different.”

Currently working as a TA for the Wines and Vines class (FST 3114) and also working on her thesis in an office she shares with Holland in the Food Science Building, Gardner took the class last fall as an independent study in order to help her understanding with her career in the wine industry.

“My career is in wine making,” Gardner said. “So I ended up taking the class to get a different perspective on a different end of the fermentation industry. It actually ended up helping me out a lot because there’s a lot of differences between beer and wine, and even though there’s some similarities in terms of flavor chemistry or flavor profiles, what people perceive is very different, and that was very interesting to me.”

Her interest in wine and her motive behind taking the class is indicative of the many who flock to the class for different reasons, coming from the different universities and backgrounds on campus.

“I think it’s a really interesting class, because we have people from all over campus coming,” said Holland. “Their final project is that they have to write a report — I think it’s 10 to 15 pages — on anything they want as long as it has something to do with brewing. So you have people from the marketing department, they come in and they

write about the advertising of beer or someone over in engineering will write about robots and beer brewing. It’s just really neat because it brings everyone from all over campus.”

Next year, the class will be forced to change its normal routine because of an increased interest from the student body.

“The number of people who have been trying to get into the class has increased exponentially since it was started about five years ago,” O’Keefe said. “Kind of like growing the class the same way Wines and Vines did, you have tradeoffs in terms of number of students who can take it versus what you can do in the class, so we’ve got to make those same decisions.”

“Last year I had a cap of 36 students.

This fall, the cap is 130, so because of that, we’ve got to do things differently,” he said.

Among the many changes, the use of podcasts will be introduced, and the in-class tasting for the beer will now be something for the students to do at home.

Although this may distance the personal connection between student and professor, O’Keefe does see some perks in a podcast that can be accessed any time of the day.

“The other thing about podcasting that’s nice,” he said, “is that they can do it anytime they want.

Sunday morning, 8:30 a.m., before they go to church, taste a couple of beers, eat the leftover pizza. That might work for some people. Others might be doing it at 8:30 to 9 o’clock at night.”

Currently, O’Keefe is pondering teaching the class both semesters. But for now, he juggles the class along with his already intense workload, which includes Flavor Chemistry, Food Product Development, Food Analysis and online English classes.

By the way, his favorite beer is Pilsner Urquell.

tuesday, april 28, 2009

page B5

Winery Chateau Morrisette in pictures

DANIEL LIN/SPPS

Top right: Photo shows the bottling facility at the winery; Bottom left: Looking at the main entrance of Chateau Morrisette from above; Bottom right: Fermentation tanks and wine barrels at the winery.

THE BREWING PROCESS Brewing Science TA Kevin Holland walks the CT through the basic stages of beer brewing:

WINE TASTING To appreciate a good glass of wine takes experience and a knowledge of what to look for when measuring the quality of the wine. Professor Bruce Zoecklein began his long affair with wine teaching enology at Fresno State in 1976 and now acts as Virginia’s state enologist. Currently, he is a member of the Enology Grape Chemistry group, which is performing extensive research on the many factors, which influence the quality of a wine grape. The group is gathering information through research and studies and is addressing impacting factors of grape production such as disease and climate change. In his role as a teacher, Zoecklein teaches the Wines and Vines course (FST 3114), and among the topics taught in the class is “the theory and practice of sensory evaluation.”

While sitting behind his desk in room 14 of the Food Science, Zoecklein was nice enough to cover the basics of wine tasting.

The first thing to do when tasting wine is to understand what it is that is being taken into consideration.

“You’re taking something,” he said, “that is a complex chemical symphony, and that’s what wine is. It’s composed of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of chemical components, and you are sort of dissecting those into certain groups.”

There are four categories to consider when evaluating a glass of wine: 1. Sight — Most people will examine their glass of wine’s clarity and look for any haze in the wine. Normally, haze can be the result of things like dead yeast that has not been fully filtered out.

“In our society,” Zoecklein said, “which is not the same as everybody around the world, our society, where you and I have been brought up drinking processed, sometimes over processed, sparkling clear beverages, physical haze precipitant and whatnot, is frequently considered a detriment or considered a quandary by many who are not that educated in wine and are afraid that a cloud or a haze could represent a public health issue.”

2. Color — Evaluating the color of a wine is more based on precedent and expectations than anything else.

“If you pour a glass of white wine,” Zoecklein said, “you expect it to be light, straw colored not deeply gold and brown. If it is, then depending upon the wine, that might be a signal that something’s happened there.”

3. Olfactory response — There are two properties to consider when evaluating your olfactory response. The first is called aroma.

“We used the term a little bit differently

in wine than we would in the common vernacular. Aroma means the smell of the grape. There’s two distinctive types of smells that you get in wine. One would be aroma, which is from the grape. The other would be bouquet which is a smell derived from processing,” he said.

Bouquet comes from the various conditions that influence the wine as it is being created. Factors such as wood and yeast add complexity to the odor.

Incidentally, what stemware a wine taster uses affects the aroma and bouquet of the wine.

“The surface area, the depth of the glass, whether the glass funnels, in other words, cones up to channel orders to your nose, all impact the volatility of components that contribute to your sense of aroma and bouquet,” Zoecklein said.

There is also the mystery behind swirling a glass of wine, which has its own proper form.

“What you should do,” he said, “is bring the glass up to your nose, take a sniff, make a note mental or written of your first impression and then swirl it and then do the same. The swirling, of course, is to increase the level of volatility.”

(Note: Another factor which affects the volatility of the wine is the temperature at which the wine is served, the general rule is that the lower the temperature, the less volatility.)

4. Palate — Like olfactory response, evaluating the palate is a more complex task. The first thing to consider is called the “mouth feel” of the wine. Zoecklein breaks down the mouth feel into the “mouth feel balance equation”. The equation is composed of sweetness derived from the grape balanced with the acidity of the grape plus the astringency (dry mouth sensation) and bitterness which comes from the grapes and barrels.

“When we’re tasting a wine (we look for),” Zoecklein said, “… good mouth feel. … That this relationship is in harmony, that you don’t get an overall propensity of sweetness, you don’t get an overall propensity of acidity, nor do you get an overall propensity of astringency and or bitterness.”

The other half of the palate category is flavor.

“Flavors,” Zoecklein said, “(are essentially) odors because the only thing that we can taste are five components. We say we can taste wine, but frequently when you use that expression it’s not in the context of sensory since it’s in the context of sort of common vernacular.

We taste five components.”

The five components that people can taste are sweetness, sugar, acid, bitterness and umami (savory character).

1.

Mashing Your Grain and Adding Water — Malted grains should be mashed at the center of the grain to make it easier for enzymes to react and convert sugars. The mashed grain is put into warm water set at various temperatures in a pot.

“So that’s a step,” Holland said, “where you add warm water to activate the enzymes in the barley.

Then these convert your starches into the fermentable sugars to later be used by the yeast. And that takes about an hour, hour and a half probably, so that’s a pretty long process, but most of it you just pour the water in, stir it, and wait.”

2. Moving the Grain — The grain should move moved in to a lauter tun, which filters the liquid.

“Basically,” Holland said, “what we use is a bucket with a false bottom — and the false bottom is a piece of plastic with holes in it,and then there’s a pipe coming out so that way you can take off the water that has the sugar in it and not pull the grains through. And then you add more water on top of that to get more of the sugars out. You’re kind of like rinsing all the sugars off the grain so you run that through for awhile.”

3.

Boiling and Hops Additions — The liquid result from moving the grain should be transferred to a kettle and set to boil for an hour. It is during this hour that the hops additions take place.

“Usually you boil some hops for about 60 minutes, and those are your bittering hops, and then after about a half hour you’ll add some in,” Holland said. “You’ll boil those ones for about half an hour and those are your flavoring hops, and then usually add some with about five or two minutes left to go, and those are your aroma hops. So the longer the hops are in the boil, you lose more of the aroma and you gain more bitterness.

4.

Fermenting — “And then after the boil,” Holland said, “we cool it down to about 68 to 74 degrees Fahrenheit, and then we add the yeast and let it ferment.” Typically, the liquid should be transferred to a different container (in about one to two weeks) because of an accumulation of dead yeast at the bottom of the container, which could spoil the flavor of the beer.

5. Kegging It or Bottling It? — From here, the only real choice left to do with your alcoholic liquid is decide whether it should be preserved in a keg or bottle. There are differences between the two.

According to Holland, “If you bottle condition, which is when you add a little bit more sugar, the little bit of yeast that’s left will eat that and make carbon dioxide and a little bit more alcohol. Then it will carbonate in the bottle, and that takes about two weeks, two, three weeks. … To keg it, a couple of days.”

Total time to brew beer: about one month, mostly because of fermentation.

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tuesday, april 28, 2009

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Chateau M o r r i sette wines an d vines A LOCAL VINEYARD IN FLOYD OPENS ITS DOORS TO EXPLAIN THE NUTS-AND-BOLTS OF MODERN WINE MAKING

H

idden an hour outside of Blacksburg in nearby Floyd is Chateau Morrisette. After taking a left down the narrow Winery Road off of the Blue Ridge Parkway, the winery appears out of the green foliage and hillsides that surround it. Like stumbling upon a giant surveying its domain, the 32,365 square foot winery sits amongst the quiet mountains and hills of Appalachia, casually producing around 80,000 cases of wine annually and maintaining a restaurant on the other side of its parking lot. The European villa look of the winery is colored with tan walls and a darker, brown roof and supported by a timber frame.

“We’re believed to be the largest salvaged timber frame in the United States,” said Nora Kuper, vice president for marketing for Chateau Morrisette. “It’s all made from Douglas fir, some of the wood came from the St. Lawrence Seaway and some came from an old warehouse in Seattle, Washington.”

I meet Kuper while passing through the entrance of the winery. She is standing at a booth made of the winery’s wine boxes; above her is a large black chandelier, which is complimented by arches of finely polished wood and white walls.

Today is the winery’s open house, and everything looks particularly elegant and neat.

Bottles, food, books, merchandise and people are everywhere. Further inside the complex, past the foyer, is a stone fireplace and large wooden bar where the wine tasting of some of the 26 varieties of wine made by the winery, not including the Hokie Bird wines from which part of its fame stems, is offered at the end of each of the multiple tours happening today. I notice that most of the lights on the wall have an upside-down, shield-looking plate with an “M” in its center.

When I arrive it is dangerously close to 2 p.m., the time of my tour, and I am instructed

by Kuper to stay in the foyer and wait for my tour guide.

My tour guide is Dick Chandler. He wears glasses, green pants and a beige shirt. A white,

well-trimmed goatee sits on his face and a black apron with the winery’s name embroidered in red hangs around his neck. He meets us in the front room of the winery and, after giving a speech that is a combination of information about the wines and history of the establishment, leads us to the crushing pad.

If one is facing the building, the crushing pad looks out over the hills and trees on the left side of the complex. It is an outside, square, gray platform covered by the brown roof of the building, and it sort of resembles a patio with a high ceiling. Several large bins, which during the mid-August to mid-October harvest season are sure to be full of grapes, are on their sides and stacked against the wall to make room for the crowd. In the distance, the section on top of an adjacent hill has been cleared. This clearing, Chandler informs the group, is a 25-acre plot of land that contains five different types of grapes. Though this is a source of grapes for the winery, it is far from its only one.

“We have 15 growers all over the state of Virginia growing grapes for us,” Chandler said. “70 percent of them grow just for us.

They’re really spread out. We have one of them way up near in Loudon County.”

There are two large metal machines standing across from each other on the pad.

One is the destemmer and the other is a crusher. They are named Ethel and Lucy, respectively. Both have metal frames that give a rigid outline to the behemoth machines.

The destemmer has a visible cylinder with holes in it, while the top of the crusher looks like a giant bin with the curve of the inside of a conch.

During the harvest time, this is the first stop for the grapes after they have been collected.

“They (the grapes) come in straight from the vineyards on our tractor trailer; they’re taken off the truck with a forklift, put through this machine right here,” said Chandler. “That’s a destemmer, takes them off the stem and slightly breaks the skin. Then they go into one of our two crushers. ... That’s a 20-ton crusher; we have a two-ton crusher that’s sitting right

inside the doors over there. Normally it’s right out here. Those operate like a bladder inside like a balloon that we pump air into, slowly presses the grapes, it slowly turns, the juice comes out underneath into a pin, and we pump it from there with a portable pump through big hoses into one of the stainless steel tanks for fermentation.”

During this time, 707 tons of grapes will come to rendezvous with Ethel and Lucy.

Once the grapes have been destemmed and crushed, the end product is moved through the hoses into large tanks or placed inside of oak barrels located in the back warehouseesque cellar of the winery. Though it is much larger and more business oriented, the cellar still gives off the same charm and polished appeal of the foyer. Inside the cellar, there are several rows of these large tanks that look like Campbell soup cans without the label. Some of the tanks are so enormous that they are able to hold up to 6,200 gallons at once.

The winery has a stainless steel tank capacity of 130,000 gallons with an additional 740 white oak barrels that hold 59 gallons each, and when new liquid comes into a tank, it does not stay there for long.

“It’s a complete cycle,” said Kuper. “Late summer all the grapes will come in. They’ll put them in the fermentator tanks here. Add the yeast. The yeast converts the natural sugars into alcohol. We just let it sit and we mix it up. You do a lot of filtering and blending.”

In addition to the expansive cellar, there is also a bottling facility and lab in the facility.

Bottling is an important part of distributing the wine and a task that the winery oversees.

Empty bottles arrive in cases to the Chateau.

Workers then take the empty bottles and put them on the line where nitrogen will be shot into them to remove air, and then they are filled with wine and finally corked. Labels are applied by hand afterward, and then the product is put back into the cases in which it arrived and sealed. Bottling the wines is a long investment that requires the winery to seek outside help.

“We hire a bunch of local people,” said Kuper. “They just help us for bottling. They’ve been bottling for three weeks, and they put them in the box as fast they can. We can do a pallet, which is 60 cases, in 15 minutes. They crank up the music, and they just do it all day long.”

Thanks to modern technology, the production rate of these bottlers has increased astronomically.

“We can do 30 pallets a day,” said Chandler, “60 cases on a pallet, eight-hour days, 40 bottles a minute.”

One of the challenges of running a winery is keeping up with new methods, technologies and advancements in the production of winemaking. Dan Tallman is director of winemaking at Chateau Morrisette and has been working at the winery since 2001. His career in the wine industry began in 1980 when he was running a sheep ranch in California and, needing a harvest time job, became employed by a local winery through a friend. Today, he has seen the winery and the art of wine making change into a much more globalized and quickly developing enterprise.

“My dad was a dentist,” Tallman said, “and it was probably a good thing that he retired when he did because he was so out of touch with dentistry and how it had grown over the years, and I tell the guys, ‘If I’m pushing them I want you to keep me on my toes, too,’ because the last thing I want to do is be one of these out-of-date winemakers that is just so stuck in his old ways because the industry, the technology and the methods are changing over the years, and you’ve got to stay on top of it as much as you can.”

In a business where timing is everything, part of Tallman’s job is making sure that the winery and its employees can properly perform a task that may only come about or be necessary once a year.

“I spend a lot of time just going back and forth making sure that the winemaking is being completed per our specifications. It’s a yearlong process, and when people come into the cellar they normally aren’t going to get very good at what they’re doing until at least the first year because we come in every morning and it’s a different process. One of the guys yesterday was pumping out chardonnay barrels and he said, ‘Well, I’ve never done that before,’ and I said, ‘Yeah I get that, but you watch some of the other guys,’ because a lot of the processes we do, we might do once a year.”

In a state with the fourth highest production rate of wine in the country, the winery has significantly grown since its humble beginnings.

Chateau Morrisette originated when founder

David Morrisette graduated from Mississippi State University with a degree in enology and viticulture. It was the school’s first attempt at the program, and he was one of the three students. After he returned to Virginia, his father, Bill Morrisette handed over control of his winery, then named Woolwine Winery, to his youngest son.

According to the Chateau Morrisette Web site, “In 1982, the first commercial wines were produced, a modest 2,000 gallons, under the Woolwine Winery label.”

The Woolwine Winery was located near where Route 8 crosses the Blue Ridge Parkway; its headquarters was a cabin where David and his father had spent a lot of time since David was in high school.

Soon after David Morrisette took control of the winery, he decided that he needed a change of location.

“One of the first things that David did,” said Chandler, “was come out here on top of this mountain, buy 52 acres along with the farmhouse that stood right there where the restaurant is. Two-story red farmhouse, and he moved the winery from the cabin to the farmhouse. Somewhere along about that time, he renamed it Chateau Morrisette.”

What Morrisette originally purchased is no longer the face of the Chateau. The immense building was completed in 1990 and took two and a half years to plan and build.

Today the sky is the limit for the winery as its labels are beginning to appear on more and more shelves across different state lines.

“Virgina, North Carolina,” Kuper said, listing off the states where the wine is sold. “We just went into West Virginia; we’re in a little bit of Tennessee, a little bit of Maryland, and that’s it. We’re still very regional. We may go into South Carolina.”

The success of the winery comes from the quality of its product, a product that has been crafted by those who consider the process of making wine as more than just the creation of a beverage.

“The process of winemaking is sort of an organizing principle for life,” Tallman said. “You got all these different wines,vv and they are peculiar, and you get to work with all these different people that are just like the wines, and it takes time to get to know the wines and the people that make them.”