Western’s industrial design department is turning the technology of tea steeping upside down with its original magnetic tea-brewing vessel design.
Around 30 Whatcom County residents marched from Fred Meyer on Lakeway Drive to City Hall as a way to remember the Holocaust in Bellingham’s fifth “March of Remembrance” on Sunday, April 19.
After more than 40 years on campus, the Environmental Studies building is trying to get a fresh, new look in the coming years.
Paul Merriman, president of Merriman Financial Education Foundation, asked a lecture hall full of Western students if they had their 401(k)s under control. No one lifted a finger.
Donations days for the Homeless Resource and Clothing Drive have been extended to Thursday, April 23. Dr. Tara Perry and two of her classes in the communications department are holding the Homeless Resource and Clothing Drive to provide the homeless with the necessities that they need for everyday life. The drive is looking for socks, knitted hats, toiletries, brightly colored backpacks, blankets, reusable water bottles and any other everyday use item you can imagine. Once the items have been gathered they will be organized into backpacks and distributed to the homeless community in downtown Bellingham. On Saturday, April 25, students will meet at AB Crepes to pass out the backpacks. AB Crepes will be opening early for the event and will be giving out a free crepe and cup of coffee to every homeless person that arrives. Junior communications major Colton Edwards is a student in one of Perry’s classes and feels a personal connection to this event. Growing up in a town with little to no homeless interaction, he felt a culture shock when he moved to Bellingham and saw the large homeless presence, Edwards said. “Service learning is all about getting in the community and helping out so they are definitely a community we wanted to reach out to,” Edwards said. Edwards is part of a three-person social media team that posts on the Twitter account for the event. The Homeless Resource and Clothing Drive is a part of Western’s Active Minds Changing Lives week, where different clubs and organizations around campus put on events, demonstrations and workshops in the effort to be active change makers not only on Westerns campus but in their own lives as well. Donations are being collected from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. in Communications Facility 294 and near the Wilson Library exit facing Old Main. For more information on the event and to follow their progress go to the event’s Twitter page @Bellingpacks.
Chuckanut Brewery has teamed up with head brewer Jason Oliver from Devils Backbone Brewing Company in Roseland, Virginia. The collaboration will bring an original lager that will be exclusively available to taste at Chuckanut Brewery in June. The product will be a low alcohol content brew, otherwise known as a sessionable beer in the brewing community. With its lower alcohol content, sessionable beer provides a better chance to taste the beer for what it is and makes for an original beverage, Oliver said. Chuckanut Brewery’s owner Will Kemper took this opportunity to broaden his lager style. “This collaboration here is kind of a new style,” Kemper said. “It’s basically a lager style of a German pilsner.” As Chuckanut Brewery’s beers revolve around lagers, the creation of a low alcohol content beer will be something new to add to the shelves, he said. The recipe will focus on the Germanic beer inspiration that both Oliver and Kemper share. “This is a small pilsner. It plays off of many of our inspirations, what we find important and interesting,” Oliver said. The interest in lagers sets both Oliver and Kemper apart from other brewers as they may focus more on ales. “We do a lot of similar types of beers, which is not what most craft brewers do,” Oliver said, “We brew a lot of lagers, more so than most brewers.” Even though the brew masters have known each other for a while, they only started talking about collaboration a few months ago. The brewers started their businesses around the same time in 2008 and met in Bamberg, Germany in 2010. On a visit to one of their suppliers, the Weyermann Malt house, Kemper won the Small Brewpub of the Year at the Great American Beer Festival in Denver in 2009 while Oliver won the same title at the World Beer Cup in 2010. “We were brand new brewers in 2009 at the Great American Beer Festival,” Oliver said. “We were competing rookies.” As Oliver was coming up for the Craft Brewers Conference in Portland this year, they decided to take this opportunity to collaborate. And because of both brewers’ success in the brewing world, they expect great feedback from the product. Their goal of creating a sessionable beer is a challenge both brewers have given themselves. “I threw this idea out there, but I didn’t know if it was going to stick,” Oliver said, “Technically [sessionable beers] are harder to produce.” Bryan Cardwell, the head brewer at Chuckanut was enthusiastic about the collaboration. “It’s really exciting. We’re actually figuring out some of it as we go.” Cardwell said. As soon as Oliver arrived at Chuckanut, both head brewers started discussing recipes and grains, keeping the Germanic beer and low alcohol content as their main inspirations. There will be more collaboration between Chuckanut and other breweries in the future, Cardwell said. “The brewing community is really small and it’s always a great excuse to meet up with peers.” As for Oliver, he plans on visiting the other breweries in Bellingham to get an idea of what the beer scene is like in the city of subdued excitement.
Every Friday since April 3, supporters of Northern Cross Collective Garden have made their voices heard outside the Whatcom County Courthouse, protesting against charges made toward the local medical dispensary in Bellingham. The trial was schedule for Monday, April 20, but has been pushed to Saturday, August 8, according to court documents.
This demonstration on Thursday, April 16, and Friday, April 17 is also asking the State House of Representatives to help fund the rest of the money needed to fully renovate the building.
A team of seven students from Western and one from the University of Washington won a $75,000 grant last weekend for their prototype of a Smart Solar Window at the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s “P3: People, Prosperity and the Planet Student Design Competition for Sustainability,” which was held Saturday, April 11, and Sunday, April 12, in Washington, D.C.
Author and journalist Todd Miller discussed rising numbers of patrol agents and security equipment along the U.S. border during a Fairhaven College's World Issues Forum.
In the wake of anniversaries of mid-century civil rights milestones such as the Selma to Montgomery March, Affirmative Action, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, professor of political science Dr. Vernon Johnson asked, “How far have we come?” Bellingham Central Library approached Johnson to do the third of a three-part lecture series on the history of the relationship between race and politics, which wrapped up on Wednesday, April 15. His lecture “Mid-Century Dream to Today's Reality: All the Ways that Race Still Matters” explored the ideas and expectations of the Voting Rights Act and Affirmative Action contrasted with recent events that challenged these ideals. Such events include recent Supreme Court rulings as well as recent allegations of police brutality in the deaths of Mike Brown, Eric Garner, Walter Scott and others. In 2013, the Supreme Court removed section four of the Voting Rights Act so that states that needed authorization to change their voting procedures no longer needed to do so. According to Johnson, “states that have a history of preventing people of color from voting” are no longer under scrutiny. Last year, the Supreme Court ruled Affirmative Action unconstitutional in Michigan universities, although federal policy stands. In attendance was Dennis Lane, a Bellingham resident associated with the nonprofit Whatcom Community Television and Communications and friend of Johnson. “He mentioned Ferguson a lot,” Lane said. “Ferguson, to me, was a way small-town police and small-town governments were able to balance their budget because of white flight. Stopping black for broken tail lights, incarcerating them, becomes a way in which Ferguson survives.” Matthew Stidham, a senior at Western Washington University and a student in Johnson’s class on race and public policy, received extra credit for attending the lecture. “I’m getting more context on top of what I got from class and getting [to hear] questions from the community. He talked about some local politics like with the new jail and immigration policy,” Stidham said, referring to discussion during the question and answers portion on the discussion of a new jail coming into the area. Johnson has been a faculty member in the Department of Political Science at Western since 1986. When anti-government violence became an issue in Bellingham in the 1990s in the form of cross burnings and racially motivated violence, he helped found the Whatcom Human Rights Task Force and chaired its board from 1997 to 2000. The lectures took place on the two Wednesdays prior to Wednesday, April 15. The first in the series was about the Anti-Hindu Riots in Bellingham in 1907 and the second was on persecution of left-wing individuals during McCarthyism.
A report has been made of a man in a gold SUV exposing himself to a female student as she walked the area of Cedar and Forest Streets at 11:55 a.m. on Thursday, April 16. The man is described as a white male in his late 20s with tan skin, short brown hair, dark eyes and wearing a dark blue shirt. The vehicle is thought to have a license plate beginning with “AR1” or “ARI.” Police are asking anyone who sees this suspect or vehicle to call 911.
A team of students from Western and the University of Washington has won a $75,000 grant for their prototype of a Smart Solar Window. The project was presented at the Environmental Protection Agency’s P3 People, Prosperity and the Planet competition April 11-12 in Washington DC. The student team constructed a completely transparent window that, like a solar panel, harnesses the energy of the sun and converts it into energy that could be used to power the building around it. According to the team's project description on the competition's website, the development and installation of these "smart windows" could reduce a building's footprint by lowering the amount of power it uses from outside sources to power heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems. "The team did a wonderful job, winning their category against other top university teams from around the country with their very impressive prototype and business plan," Western Professor David Patrick said in an email, who accompanied the team to the competition in DC. "I couldn't be more proud of the way they represented themselves and Western." The event is hosted by the United States Environmental Protection Agency and projects are brought before a panel of experts created by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, according to the competition's website. The EPA considers projects that address water, energy, agriculture, built environment, and materials and chemicals.
More than 1,000 people filed into the Performing Arts Center for Western’s second independent Technology, Education and Design (TED) conference. Understanding fear, humans using fire in evolution, and transgender inclusion in the NCAA were a few topics discussed Saturday, April 11. TEDxWWU received 70 applications from professors, students and members of the community for potential speakers. It was narrowed down to 13 applicants chosen.
Two Israel Defense Force (IDF) soldiers told stories at Western about their journey and insight into Israeli politics.
After almost two years of business, the Union Coffee Shop is making another splash into the Bellingham coffee scene by opening a new location on State Street on Wednesday, April 15.
The iCare Club is working in partnership with the Bellingham Central Lions Club to collect these glasses. All of the donated glasses will be given to those in rural communities in El Salvador where many families are unable to afford eye care.
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